


Romantic Tragedy Revisited

by Inspirationalmisquotes



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ben Solo Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Drama, E for eventually explicit, F/M, How Do I Tag, Rey is Ben's padawan trope, Teacher-Student Relationship, poor communication, wholesome Luke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-05-27 11:13:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15023342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inspirationalmisquotes/pseuds/Inspirationalmisquotes
Summary: Ben knows exactly what this is. This is the result of yet another family meeting. Another clever ploy to ‘calm Ben down.’ It’s a strategy old as time. Give a kid a pet to teach him responsibility. Hope he doesn’t kill it.





	1. Chapter 1

“Nineteen is too old.”

“You’ll like her.”

They’re taking a shortcut through the courtyards that wrap around the temple, cutting straight through to the training center where Luke’s newest project is waiting for them. Ben is dragging his feet and ripping leaves off of trees as they go.

He’s twenty-nine. A Jedi in his own right. One of the four so far who have completed Luke’s training and joined his new order.

And now, in the prime of his life, instead of restoring peace to the galaxy, instead of serving on the new Jedi council, instead of putting his training to some kind of use—  
He’ll be babysitting the academy’s latest rescue.

“How the hell did you find her, anyway?” he asks, shredding his handful of leaves.

“Good question. You know how I was on Jakku looking for the Falcon? Because I got that tip from Calrissian a few cycles ago, and your father was so sure he had it the whole time—“

“You’ve told me the story.” Ben isn’t even sure what his uncle is referencing, but he’s sure he’s heard it a thousand times.

“Well, anyway.” Luke chuckles to himself at the memory. “She just kind of stumbled into my path along the way. Just a happy accident. A stroke of luck.” he glances back over his shoulder and catches Ben’s eye. “And I don’t believe in luck.”

“She’s a Scavenger.” Says Ben. “She’ll rob us blind, steal a ship, and auction off the Jedi texts.”

Luke laughs good-naturedly. “Relax, Kid. I have a good feeling about this one.”

He would.

Ben knows exactly what this is. This is the result of yet another family meeting. Another clever ploy to ‘calm Ben down.’ It’s a strategy old as time. Give a kid a pet to teach him responsibility. Hope he doesn’t kill it.

“You’ll have to set a good example.” says Luke, in that loving, vaguely paternal manner of his that makes Ben want to run himself through with his saber. “And she’ll need guidance. It’ll be very hard for her to adjust. She’ll be brand new. All the kids her age will be leaps and bounds ahead of her.”

“Another reason you should have left her in the desert.”

“Another reason for you to train her personally.” Luke stops and puts a hand on his shoulder, and he manages not to shrug it off. “Listen, Kid. I wouldn’t be giving you this kind of responsibility if I didn’t think you could handle it.”

Ben hangs his head and glowers at the ground. Luke expects him to be flattered. Like it’s some great leap of faith, putting a young padawan in his care and trusting him not to corrupt her.

What does the old man want? A thank-you? For what’s shaping up to be ten years of babysitting?

Luke says it might not take that long. He says she’s ‘exceptionally gifted.’ That he’s never seen anything like it.

Ben’s going to need a little more than his uncle’s word.

They reach the end of the gardens, and there by the training room entrance is the girl. She’s hanging off one of the narrow granite columns in the vestibule, swinging back and forth, chatting with a maintenance droid.

She is so much younger than Ben thought she would be. He remembers being nineteen. It hadn’t felt so long ago.

Her skin is bright and dewy, covered in so many freckles she’s almost tan, and her hair has been twisted up into three glossy little knobs at the back of her head. Her robes are guazy and grey. She’s still covered in sand.

The girl looks up at him, and her eyes widen. He tries not to scowl back at her. Not what she expected, is he? Not the Prince his uncle had promised, is he?

Then her pretty face splits into a truly brilliant smile, and her hand jabs out and seizes his, jerking it up and down like she’s never shaken hands in her life. “Hi!” she’s practically vibrating with excitement. “I’m Rey.”

An intense, unfamiliar sensation floods him as soon as their hands touch. Harsh, sharp, and scalding, like a shot of Corellian whiskey— only so much sweeter. His heart actually aches. For a half-second, they’re the only two people in the world.

The girl drops his hand. “It’s so good to meet you. Luke’s told me all about you. Is it true your mother is Princess Leia? A real Princess?” she has a thick, melodic accent and a voice that goes up and down like she’s singing. “That doesn’t even seem real. It’s all so unbelievable. I always thought they were myths! But here you are. And you’re going to teach me, aren’t you? Luke says I’ll train with you for five years at least. I’m so glad it’s you who's teaching me. How do you do?”

He stares down at his fingers and flexes them. The aftershocks of their connection are still ringing through him, like the sting from touching a live wire.  
Her head drops to the left, curiously. She studies him, then edges the words out of the corner of her mouth, as if that alone makes it an aside to his uncle. “Um. Does. Does he… talk?”

“I talk.” the words come out sharper than he’d intended.

“Good.” the crease between her brows vanishes. “So, when do we start? Do we start now?”

“Do you always talk so much?”

She looks taken aback, but not in the least offended. She smiles up at his uncle, coyly conspiratorial. “He’s a character, isn’t he?”

“Watch your mouth.” he snaps, and immediately regrets it. This is going all wrong. He doesn’t want to make her hate him. He wants to be alone with her. And maybe hold her hand again.

She blanches, and the freckles on her nose scrunch up in distaste. She tips her head all the way back to look him in the eye. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Ben’s about to respond with something abrasive, but his uncle steps in to save him from himself.

“Rey, Ben will be supervising your training and overseeing your assimilation into academy life.” he claps him on the back. “If you need anything—anything at all— you can go straight to him. Isn’t that right, Ben?”

He stares some more, which is definitely creeping her out. He jerks his head in agreement.

Rey smiles. At Luke, that is. “Okay.” She says. “So are we going to get started today? Do I get a lightsaber now?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey adjusts to academy life, and Ben adjusts to Rey.

The first few days are arduous, to say the least. She doesn’t like to study. She doesn’t like to wake up early. She’s especially unwilling to sit still for any length of time. Rey is excitable, literal, stubborn, and naive. She doesn’t like to admit when she’s wrong, which makes teaching her a hellacious nightmare, and when she does well— making the salt shaker levitate at dinner, for example— it is enough to convince her she doesn’t need practice.

Ben schedules morning sessions in the library before breakfast, which means he has to physically drag her out of bed every morning. She’s still staying in one of the guest rooms, tucked way at the back of the mountain ridge, cozy and quiet, safe from the morning sunshine. Every day begins with a tug of war over her bed linens.

She sleeps in a thin, filmy little slip that’s a mere suggestion of what a nightgown should be, and she’s either too blasé or too trusting to care if he sees her in it. Probably the latter. Definitely the latter. She gets dressed in front of him— not to be coy— but out of general ignorance, out of practicality, because she doesn’t know any better, and to a degree, because she knows as well as he does if he left the room for a second she would go straight back to bed.

“I never used to sleep in late,” She gushes, whipping off the nightgown with a snappish movement and letting it flutter to the floor. Ben stares at the ground. At the ground, and nothing else. “It would get so hot on Jakku that you were suffocating before the sun was halfway up. But it’s so nice and cool here. Gina says there’s a lake. Is that true?”

Ben can’t make much sense of what she’s saying. He’s too busy carefully averting his eyes as she staggers around the little room, jumping up and down as she hikes up her pants. “Who— who’s Gina?”

“My friend. She’s Remy’s Padawan. Do you know Remy?”

“Oh. Right.” He’s sure he knows the name. He’s just having a hard time concentrating right now.

“Well? Is there?”

“Is there what?”

“A lake. Can we go to it?”

“There’s a seaside a quarter mile away,” he says, thumbs grinding circles into his temples. “And we might go there someday, if you ever get dressed.”

“Ha ha.” Rey spans out her arms at her side, presenting her fully clothed form, as if the sight of her out of her pajamas should somehow impress him.  
It does. The sight of her always impresses him. It’s been three days, and he’s well on his way to becoming smitten.

They go up the walk, through the courtyards to the library, and he tries to familiarize her with the basics; history, ethics, philosophy— all the things she should know about becoming a Jedi. But he’s not a talented teacher, unable to hold her interest more than a moment, and she’s an even worse student.

“Ugh.” she moans, dramatically, sprawling face-down over the litany of open books on the table between them. Her voice echoes around the empty room. “Can’t we do this outside? There’s a bench in the gardens. Can we Ben? Can we please?”

“Finish your chapter.” He doesn’t look up from his tablet. “And I’ll have questions for you when you’re finished, so you’d better not just skim it.”

She settles her chin on her fist and studies him. “Can we have breakfast?”

“Finish your reading first.”

“What’s for breakfast? And what are we doing after?”

“Finish your reading. Don’t make me tell you again.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Ben gawks at her, fingers frozen over the screen. “Do I— what?”

“Have a girlfriend.” Says Rey, carelessly. “Is she pretty? I bet if you tell me her name I would know her. I already know most of the girls here. It’s not hard. There are only five of us.”

Ben swallows. Rey has a habit, he’s noticed, of giving voice to every thought that wanders through her head. It would get her in trouble, if what she had to say weren’t so sweet.

And sometimes aggravating. And invasive. But he knows she means well.

“I don’t have a girlfriend.” He says, when he finally remembers that he knows several words, and how to put them together. “I did a few years ago. Bazine. She left the order.”

“Oh. That’s sad.” Rey’s shoulders go slack and her head drops in sympathy. “It is sad when people leave you, isn’t it? I know all about that.”

His heart aches for her. Luke told him about her life on Jakku. How long she’d been alone.

“Enough chit-chat.” He says, stiffly. “Just do as your told.”

She pouts, and the sour expression stays locked in place as she soldiers through her reading.

He does not stare at her.

Rosy sunshine and cold, damp air seep in through the open windows, illuminating Rey like an angel. Her hair is still knotted in three buns— she sleeps in them— with a few scraps hanging loose around her face. She’s changed from her nightgown into pants and a baggy, loose-fitting shirt. There’s a loop on her belt where a lightsaber will go someday. He thinks she looks like a little girl playing dress-up, pretending to be a Jedi. And for all the training she’s had, she may as well be.  
Ben isn’t staring. Really, he’s not.

Rey finishes her chapter and looks up at him with wide, glittering eyes and that same brilliant smile. His heart jerks in his chest.

“Can we have breakfast outside?"


	3. Chapter 3

 

“Focus.”

“I am focusing.”

“Breathe.”

“I always do that.” Rey scoffs, stretches her legs, and resituates herself on the rock. “This is stupid.”

Ben sighs, grabbing her shoulders to keep her from wriggling around. “Work with me, Rey.” He pleads. “Just give it a chance.”

The girl looks at him through barely-opened eyes. Then she snaps them shut and sits up straighter. “Alright.” She says, and does as he says.

Once in a blue moon will he get that response.

He’s only just managed to pry her away from the other padawans. Miles and Remy are holding a group session with some of the older kids while Luke coaches a new group of younglings, and Rey had begged him to let her join in with them. It’s some elaborate sparring session, and, so far as Ben can tell, more of a game than a lesson. It looked a bit rough. He wouldn’t let Rey near it.

She’s been very hostile towards him in the quarter-hour since.

She’s midway through the morning meditation, and she has yet to close her eyes for more than ten seconds.

“Rey.” He says sternly. “Concentrate.”

The girl gives him an unimpressed look, then yawns, then shuts her eyes.

Finally.

All is still for a few moments more. He senses how her brain refuses to settle. There are voices shrieking at her to open her eyes and look around, to make sure no one is coming to steal her haul.

He puts his hand on her lower back to straighten her, and feels all the nervousness ebb. The chatter fades to a murmur. Rey draws in a long, deep breath.

Ben presses into her mind, just skimming the surface, only trying to gauge her feelings in a very general sense. How she likes it here. If she’s happy. If he's doing a terrible job of mentoring her.

He gets more than he bargained for. Her mind is no calmer than the sea; restless and roiling, crackling with activity, leaping from thought to thought compulsively and circling round again.

She’s thinking about Gina and Luke, her two new friends. She’s keeping a tally in her head of all the new friends she’s made since she came here. She can scarcely believe her good luck. So many friends. So many people. So much green.

And Ben. She never dreamed he’d be so handsome. Rey likes him so much. She hopes he likes her—

That jostles him. He startles, consciousness snapping back into his body like something elastic.  
Is she mad? Is she _blind_?

Rey senses him lurking at the edges of her consciousness and gives him a lazy little mental shove, shooing him out of her head as if swatting at a fly. But there’s no force behind it. She’s been alone too long to put much stock in privacy.

He’s in the middle of thinking just how lucky that is when Rey smashes into his consciousness like a cinder block through shatterglass.

She flicks through irrelevent fragments of passing thought as carelessly as if she’s skimming through textbook pages. She plucks out words and images and holds them up to the light.

Judging. Scrutinizing.

“Rey.” he sputters, scandalized.

 _What?_ She thinks back at him. And goes harder.

He scrambles to shield her from all the base, unsavory thoughts he’s been having of _her_ — thoughts of tearing that nightgown off with his teeth, burying his face between her young, soft thighs, licking her clit until she begs him to stop. Bouncing her on his lap, fucking her raw, teaching her everything he knows, giving her something to babble about— not that she’s ever needed an excuse. Daydreams and delusional fantasies of breaking her in just right.

Ben knows that even if he were her age and handsome, nicely-proportioned with straight teeth and normal ears—

She’d still be crazy to let him touch her.

Rey breezes by the locked doors of his consciousness carelessly, exploring everything else as though rifling through drawers and dumping the contents onto the floor.

“You know how to play poker.” She muses. “Will you teach me?”

“Rey. Stop this at once.”

“But you did it to me— Oh!” Her pretty eyes snap open. “You— you’re sad.”

She reaches up to touch his cheek, and he flinches away.

“You’re just like me.” And she smiles.

He catches her hand. “Rey,” he says, very seriously. “Never do that again.”

“How come? You did it to me.” And she doesn’t wait for an answer. “Didn’t I do good? That was my first try at mind-reading.”

“You did _well_ , it isn’t called mind-reading, and if you try it on me again I’ll lay you out.”

Rey laughs out loud. She’s known him for all of six days, and already she’s learning to take his threats and fits of temper with a grain of salt. “You’re all talk.”

“Am I?”

“They trust you, Ben.” Says Rey, suddenly, with all the blind faith of someone who waited fifteen years for nothing. “They let you take care of me. So they must trust you.”

His heart twists at that. He blinks very quickly, and swallows against the ache in his throat. He puts his hand under her chin and tips her face up to his.

“Don’t _ever_ do that again. Do you understand me, Scavenger?”

Rey works her lower lip between her teeth. “What if I need to, though?”

“You won’t.”

“Luke says that we’ll have a force bond when—“

“Just.” He hears the voices nagging at the back of his mind, whispering _strikehurtkill_ in their usual nerve-wracking, bone-chilling hiss, hears the malice in his own voice. He takes a deep, fortifying breath and says, very gently, “Just don’t. Okay?”

An unfriendly silence settles and elapses. He lets go of her chin.

Then Rey smiles up at him again; tentative, playful, and not quite apologetic. “Okay.”

 

 

The Temple is beautiful at night. During the day, it’s nothing but a seamless box of noise and confusion. It is this way, inarguably because, his uncle Luke is at the helm. Luke approaches the running of his academy the same way he approaches everything— cheerfully, haphazardly, and with wildly misplaced optimism. He would have mismanaged the whole operation into the ground within the first week had it not been for Artoo and Threepio holding down the fort in admin.

But for now, at least, all is quiet. Ben and Luke walk through the silent high-stone corridors, looking out through the gaps between the pillars at the academy’s starlit seaside gardens. Here, in the East Wing, the salt is so thick in the air he can almost see the granules. Far away, the miniscule flashes of passing ships flit like sparks across the dull blue sky.

It’s been a long time since they’ve done this— talked. Visited, really. For any length of time. Ben’s using it wisely. He’s complaining.

“She’s stubborn.” he grouses. “And impulsive.”

“You’ve mentioned. Is that mildew, or just a— yep, it’s mildew. This is what you get for building a temple so close to the Force-forsaken sea.”

“She doesn’t listen. She refuses to complete the most basic of assignments.”

“Would you look at that. There’s more over here.”

“—childish, irreverent, with an infant’s capacity to grasp the concept of her own mortality—“

“Sounds like a handful.” Luke comments.

“ _And_ she’s arrogant.” Ben says. “You should have heard her in the dining hall this morning.”

“Have we gone the whole way round yet? I can never tell. Threepio keeps harassing me to number the classrooms, but it just keeps slipping my mind…”

“I told her the role of the Jedi is to maintain balance and not interfere. To not be the heros. And she just _laughed at me_ and said, ‘Well, that’ll have to go.’”

“Should I start offering night classes?” Luke wonders aloud. “It would make the day a drag, but at least that way we could all have a longer lunch-break—”

“Would you cut it out?” Ben isn’t hurt, or even really very angry. Luke just _does_ this sort of thing. He knows his uncle is listening. “Just admit it. She’s too old. You knew this was going to cause problems and you brought her in anyway.”

Luke sighs. “Well, what else was I supposed to do? Leave her with Plutt?”

“No.” The idea makes him sick and angry. “Just… she needs to understand that the rules are different here than they are in the desert. She can’t just get up in the middle of a lesson and arbitrarily decide she’d rather go for a walk.”

“I thought she might be too much.” Luke presses his lips together and nods. “I _can_ reassign her, you know. I’ve been thinking. Miles is about ready for an apprentice. And he seems to like Rey well enough. I’ll ask him how he feels about taking her on.”

Ben tries not to visibly flinch at the suggestion. “I— I wasn’t— we have our work cut out for us, is all—“

Luke’s interrupting laughter reverberates around the pillars, startling a small flock of birds from the trees in the garden. “You’re overcompensating, Kid.” he thumbs his nose. “We get it. You don’t like her. Ease up a bit.”

“Overcomp— I never said I— Nevermind.” Ben can feel his ears flushing a dark, loathsome red. He stares at the ground. “Just forget it.” 

“Oh, you don’t need to get all broody.”

“I’m not.”

“Alright Pal. It’s okay. She’s a sweet girl.” He sobers abruptly and nods at nothing. Eyes fixed on some indiscernible point in the blue-black distance. Or perhaps he’s just looking at mildew. “But... be careful, okay Ben?”

Ben doesn’t answer.

“She’s only nineteen, and—“

“I’ll be careful.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

 

Luke’s premonitions of Rey struggling to fit in among the other padawans prove dramatically wrong. The girl befriends everything that looks at her. And everything that looks at her loves her. Even the droids. Even Ben’s own peers.

Even Ben.

It’s been a little under four months.

Their training regimen has become fairly routine, with a few daily adjustments. Mornings, Ben goes to her room and tries to drag her out of bed with varying degrees of success. She dresses, they study for a half hour, then go down to breakfast in the dining hall, to fortify themselves for a day of studying— and not much else. Ben eats quickly and efficiently, selecting only healthy, balanced foods and not bothering to enjoy the meal except for his half-cup of caf and Rey’s company.

Rey picks everything apart daintily with her fingers and steals scraps off his plate. She talks while she eats, and when fruit juice rolls down her fingers to her wrists, she licks it off.

“What’re we doing today?” She says with her mouth full.

“Studying. Well do some lightsaber forms in the evening if you’re good.” Then, in an undertone, “So I wouldn’t count on it.”

She swallows, and pauses long enough between bites to scowl at him. “When are we going on a real mission?”

“Assignments aren’t given out arbitrarily.”

“But Gina goes on them.” Rey looks forlornly over at her friend, who is eating breakfast with her master on the other side of the hall.

“Gina has been training longer than you.” He says. “And most of what she’s done has been to guard a few Populist senators at conferences. She’s hardly fighting the good fight. And don’t play with your food.”

“At least she’s doing something.” Rey scrapes at her food with her fork, then pinches a sausage link between her fingers and bites into it.

“Well do something soon.” He says.

“When do we go to Kyber.” Her tone is flat, rehearsed.

“I’m going to extend the wait another year for every time you ask that question. Eat your breakfast.”

After breakfast, he teaches her lightsaber forms, even after emphatically insisting she had _not_ been good. At first, Rey is delighted at having moved on from the library, but soon her enthusiasm wanes. They use wooden staffs instead of sabers and he spends most of the morning showing her forms.

Some masters, apparently, ease their apprentices into training. They let them win when they spar.  
Not Ben. Ben believes in shock therapy.

When the others train with him, they fear for their lives. Even Luke is wary of him.

Not Rey.

Every time she faces him she feels anger, hopelessness, frustration and dissatisfaction.

But not fear. She doesn’t fear him.

He can sense the feeling radiating from her; brazen, careless faith. Ben won’t let anything hurt me.

It pulls at his heartstrings.

_That’s right, Darling._

He whips his staff past her ear with a quarter-inch to spare. Just to keep her on her toes.

In the short time Rey has been his apprentice, he has received a barrage of compliments for her, as if he is in any way responsible. Praise, appreciation, seemingly harmless overheard commentary—

“Funny girl, isn’t she?”

“Quite the flirt, that Rey.”

“Solo spoils her, but he doesn’t spoil her _rotten_.”

— But never criticism. Never harsh words.

Those come only from him.

He knows he’s lavish with his criticism and stingy with his praise. He’s certain the nicest thing he’s said about her these past four months is that she takes criticism well. Which Rey has informed him doesn’t qualify as a compliment.

Truthfully, a part of him feels like his feelings are immoral— and not just because of the power dynamics at play.

It can’t be right for a Jedi to attach himself so permanently, so devotedly, to a mere mortal. She’s only flesh and bone. He has an obligation to a higher power. He is an instrument of the force, as is she, and she can’t be the center of his world.

But she is.

“How do I look?” She twirls innocently in her borrowed dress, and Ben’s mouth automatically twists into a grimace.

“It’s a bit sheer.” He says, coolly.

Her face falls.

They’re in her room. It’s late into the afternoon. The low-hanging sun casts shadows around the little sprouts growing in teacups on her window sill.

When Rey first moved in out of the guest lodgings, her room had been little more than a damp, grubby, wind-weathered shack. Now the crooked floors are packed with hand-woven mats she showed all her friends to make out if the reeds by the waters edge. There is a broken full-length mirror Ben found in the academy basement and a tiny bookshelf from his own room. A litany of neatly-crocheted blankets Rey made out of scraps. A doll on the bedside that she brought from Jakku. A chest full of dresses and civilian clothes that Ben actually worked up the nerve to write to his mother for, because a girl her age shouldn’t have nothing to her name but those heavy, conservative academy uniforms.

Included is a real fleece nightgown that Ben cannot see through, and if he could thank his mother for this without forfeiting whatever remains of her opinion of him, he would.

Ben sits on a chair in the corner while Rey primps.  
Primp may not be the best word. She’s taken her hair down and scrubbed on some cheap, waxy lipstick with as much elegance and accuracy as a child trying to color inside the lines. All the same, she looks lovely.

Rey is going out with her friends. And Ben is fine with that.

She’s allowed to go out. That’s allowed. As Luke has explained to him several times.

“You ought to let her out more,” and “she’s young. Let her have fun,” and “Rey’s a good kid, she won't cause trouble,” always accompanied by a fatherly smile and a pat on the back.

Rey, Gina, and a few other boys Ben doesn’t like the look of are going to the boardwalk a couple miles down the coast. Rey’s dress is borrowed from Gina, who got it who-knows-where, and who, for the record, is at least six inches shorter than Rey. The dress is loose and beachy, barely touching her mid-thigh and fluttering up around her hips with every breeze. Ben has very mixed feelings about the dress.

Rey turns and looks at herself in the cracked mirror. Her mouth scrunches to the side. “ _I_ think it looks nice.” She looks over her shoulder at him for confirmation.

Ben avoids her eyes.

He feels her pluck at the bond like a harp string.  
_Ben? Is everything okay?_

_Yes._

But of course it’s not, and he wishes she wouldn’t look inside his head. He lives in constant fear that she will be able to feel his love through the bond like a physical caress.

Or feel his jealousy, sharp-clawed and rankling.  
Or sense his loneliness. His longing. His insecurities.

Or Snoke.

“Benny,” Rey rocks forward onto her toes so they’re at eye-level— even though he’s sitting— and puts her face very close to his. “Can I ask you a question?”

“ _May_ I ask a question.” He chides. “And no.”

“Do you not want me to go?”

Ben starts. He looks into her eyes, taking in the little confused creases around them, and the way her lip is twisted between her teeth like it does when they do puzzles together. She can see inside his head. She’s never had any trouble reading him. It’s deciphering what she’s read.

“No.” He says. “I mean— no, I don’t mind.”

She squints at him, like he’s a particularly boring block of text in a book she doesn’t want to be studying. “Huh.”

She hikes up her skirt and clambers into his lap.  
Ben doesn’t have time to process what’s happening, or formulate a response, or even will himself not to get hard, because in an instant he has a lap full of soft skin tacky with sea salt, and lithe, bony limbs, knobby-knees, grubby and sand-gritty, sweet.

The hollow of her throat brushes his nose, and before he can stop himself Ben sucks in a lungful of her scent. She smells like engine grease from a morning spent working on the academy speeders. She smells like rain on Chandrila on sleepy summer mornings. She feels wonderful, and it’s achingly right, and if she would just lower her hips a little and put her arms around him he could—

“Ben,” She says, very seriously, taking his face in her hands. “I have two very important things to tell you.”

He nods, dumbly. “Okay.”

Under normal circumstances, he would have the sense of mind to stop this. He would explain to her the rules of polite conversation and personal space for the twentieth time in the hour, and she would pretend to listen and then not ten minutes later put her hand in his pocket in front of Miles and Remy and karking _Luke_ in search of a pen. Or something.

But these aren’t normal circumstances. He isn’t exactly in any position to be lecturing Rey about the rules of polite conversation while he’s tenting in his pants literal _inches_ below her.

“The first thing,” She says, “is that I’m going to go out with my friends whenever I want to and you’re not going to stop me.” She crushes the tip of her nose to his. “But I promise I’ll always love you best. Even more than Gina. Don’t tell her.”

“Okay.” He says, eloquently.

“The second thing.” She shimmies closer, and Ben snaps his hands around her hips in a vice-grip to hold her still. “Luke says it’s funny you haven’t taken me off-world yet— because he’s offered you about a million assignments—“ here her eyes narrow suspiciously, “— and he says if you and me don’t go on a mission soon he’s going to let me tag along with Remy and Gi— Ben, Ben, _stop_ , you’re hurting me.”

His grip slackens. Rey sits back on his knees and pulls her dress up all the way to inspect the bright red finger-shaped blotches on her waist. She scowls at him. “Look what you've done to me.”

There’s no real bite to her words, but the sight of the budding bruises hits him like a shock of ice water. His anger dissolves as quickly as it had set on. “I’m sorry.” He says, pulling her dress back down. He puts his arms around her clumsily. “I—I didn’t mean— we’ll go somewhere, Rey.”

“I just wish you’d use your words.” She says. Her little chin pokes at his shoulder.

He ignores this. “Luke says there’s trouble near the outer rim.” He says. “There have been violent conflicts among mining colonies there. Some group called the First Order. It’s bound to be dangerous. You’ll get to try out all those new forms I’ve shown you with your quarterstaff.”

She grumbles, reluctant to be placated.

“And you can fly us the whole way there and back.” He coaxes.

This peaks her interest. She sits up in his lap and brings her face back to his. “Really?”

“Just… you’re not Remy’s Padawan. Or Luke’s. Or anyone else’s.” He presses his nose to hers, and she nuzzles back. “Just give me a few days, okay? We’ll go.”

She smiles. Wide and warm and all for him.  
He sort of grimaces back and gently pushes her off his lap. “Go on.” He says, “Get out of here. Go have fun.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

Ben hears voices.

It’s under control.

That’s how he explains it, when it comes up, as it inevitably always does. He’s got his answers rehearsed by now. He sticks to the script—

It’s just the one voice, mainly. 

No, I don’t know what it wants.

For as long as I can remember.

No, it’s never really quiet.

To Luke, to his parents, to Remy, to Miles, to everyone who’s ever come close enough to ask.

What is _wrong_ with you?

It’s not so bad as it was in his early twenties. Now, the voices are manageable; a faint, ceaseless, sinister, indecipherable hum of activity at the back of his mind, whispering _hurt, kill, conquer,_ scoring violent images on the backs of his eyelids and projecting vaguely ominous prophecies in the hazy gray hours before he wakes.

Remy, who has tinnitus, was very empathetic about the whole thing when Ben first told him-- but beyond that it’s not a very relatable situation. Or an easy conversation. So, generally, he avoids having it.

But he and Luke have talked about it. They’ve found ways to cope.

It’s all under control.

“What’s wrong with you?” Rey stops mid swing, her training staff suspended mid-air. Her head cocks so dramatically her ear nearly touches her shoulder.

Ben’s grip on his own staff slackens. “ _What_ are you talking about? What is it _now?_ ”

If he’s more irritable than usual this morning, it’s only because Rey has been especially troublesome.

This morning before breakfast they did calligraphy together in the library, and Rey— who had made it plain she had no interest in learning the cursive forms of any letters, besides her own name and Ben’s— had wasted nearly a whole bottle of ink doodling and stamping her fingerprints across the parchment. 

He gave her a quiz on the outer rim planets and their moons, and instead of leaving blanks where she didn’t know the answers, she wrote “fuck you Ben” in the margins.

Later, while they were eating, he found the despised philosophy textbook she claimed to have lost jammed under the floorboards beneath her chair.

And when he looked up, she’d stolen his muffin.

Rey’s mouth tugs down at the corners in a confused little pout. “There’s something wrong inside your head. Are you sick?” Her staff clatters suddenly against the training room floor and she scurries up to him, ignoring his grumbling protests as she takes his head in her hands and and drags his forehead down to hers to better examine him.

The angle hurts his neck, and his forehead smarts where she knocked it against her own. But then her fingers twist in his hair and his eyes fall shut.

She pries, like she always does, delving into his consciousness without permission or warning.

He projects an image of the two of them by the seaside together. Him teaching her how to swim.

She sees right through it. “There’s something wrong with you.” she says, definitely, with a stiff, single nod. She says it like a diagnosis. Not a condemnation.

“Nothing’s wrong with me.” he bristles. “Let go. Go back to your tape.” he points at the red X on the floor.

“No,” she taps her fingers against the side of his skull appraisingly. “I’m busy. Hold still.”

Miles is right. She is spoiled.

Rey strokes an errant lock of hair behind his ear. “Can you take anything for it? Do you need to lie down?”

“Hush.” Ben tries to brush her off. “Rey. _Stop it_.”

There’s a sudden clanging noise, the offended chirps of a maintenance droid, and the sound of Luke’s voice saying “Sorry, Sorry,” followed by a clatter of heavy footsteps down the hall.

Ben has only just managed to put an arm's length of distance between himself and Rey when his uncle comes barreling through the doorway, skidding on the foam-packed floor.

“Hey Kid.” He’s beaming, breathless, cheeks bright and wild hair windswept. His excitement is almost palpable. “Guess what?”

 

 

“Please.”

“No.”

_“Please.”_

“No.”

“I’ll be good for a _week._ ”

“Get down from there,” distractedly, he pulls her off the balcony ledge where she’s been sitting and pestering him while he watches for the ship.

When Luke had told him the news, Rey had begged him. And she’d gone on begging till sundown. Ben had gone on refusing her.

Which he doesn’t do often, but for him, it’s a first. Take that, Miles. He can say no to her.

She’d been an insufferable hellion all morning, but truthfully, he just isn’t ready for Rey to _know._

She has some idea. She’s seen inside his head, flipped through his memories like a scrapbook. She knows about the nurse maids and nannies and droids that tended to him growing up, the way Han always seemed to be leaving immediately after every return home. How they both were always afraid of him.

But she doesn’t know how intensely, damningly _uncomfortable_ it all is. The long, stilted, drawn-out pauses when they talk over holo-vids. The way they flail for conversation topics. How even though he has so much to tell them every time they visit, he never has anything to _say._

“Two weeks.” she wagers.

“You’re not meeting my parents.”

“Why not?” she whines. Rey never whines. She bosses, she commands, and sometimes, when she’s cornered, she nags. She must want this badly.

“I’m not going over this again. Go back to your room and study.”

“Ben. Ben, I’ve been hearing stories about them since I was a little girl, it’s all I want, I’ll never ask you for anything ever again—

“Oh, come on Ben.” a familiar, jarring voice drags his attention away from the skyline. “Just introduce us.”

He hadn’t seen the ship land. They must have snuck in the back entrance.

Ben turns slowly, feeling a flood of apprehension and dread.

His father hasn’t changed, of course. Same scruffy gray hair, same ratty jacket, same scowl. He’s looking at Rey.

His mother looks as weary and regal as ever, her long hair shot through with gray and bundled up in a haphazard braid. She’s looking at Rey.

If it were anyone else, Ben would be jealous. It’s been nearly fourteen months since they’ve seen him last. Not that he’s counting.

But for Rey, he only feels pride. _Go on looking at her,_ he wants to tell them, _Isn’t she perfect? Isn’t she special? She learns every lightsaber form on the first try. She can speak binary. She can crochet. I know you haven’t seen me in person for over a year, but go on looking at her. Isn’t she something? ___

__His father catches his eye and lets out an inarticulate, nearly-inaudible grunt in greeting. His head jerks. “Been a while.” he remarks._ _

__Rey stands frozen, her lips slack, hands still clasped from when she was pleading with him mere moments earlier._ _

__His mother’s laugh shatters through the silence, startling a flock of birds out of a tree beneath the balcony. “Ben!” she hurries forward and wraps her arms around him. Her every movement screams of fatigue, but when her eyes meet his they’re lively and bright with that familiar humor. “It’s been so long.”_ _

__“Yeah.” he agrees. There’s a sharp pain in his throat._ _

__Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Rey and his father shaking hands. Rey looks awed and petrified. His father looks grudgingly impressed. “Well, son.” he says, without taking his appraising eyes off of Rey, “How in the hell did you get--”_ _

__“Rey is my Padawan.” Ben interrupts. “Rey, this is Han Solo and Senator Leia Organa.”_ _

__“Hello Rey.” His mother casts her a hasty sidelong glance and pulls Ben down by the back of his neck so she can kiss him._ _

__“So.” says Han, grinning awkwardly to buffer the long, painful pause when his eyes meet Ben’s over Leia’s shoulder. “Stuck with this guy, are you, Rey?”_ _

__“Stuck is right.” she says, with a smile that changes her whole face. “He makes me get up before daybreak.”_ _

__“The humanity.”_ _

__“I know.” says Rey, with all the intensity and fervor of one who has finally found a lone kindred spirit._ _

__“Let’s go inside and talk.” Ben’s mother hooks her arm through his and rolls up a handful of his Han’s jacket, hustling them all back inside. “I want to hear all about what you two have been up to.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one ran a bit long, so I'm splitting it in half. Update soon to come. As always, thank you all for your lovely and supportive feedback, it is very appreciated. <3


	6. Chapter 6

They can’t stay long. They never can.

“We’re just here for dinner,” his mother warns, as droids flit about, setting the table. “And to talk with Luke.”

“Of course.” says Ben, flatly.

“Is it true you made the kessle run in under fourteen parsecs?” Rey clambers into her chair and stares up at his father, her eyes wide as threepio’s.

Han looks surprised, and maybe a little flattered. “Twelve.” he grumbles, and shuffles further down the bench to sit next to Rey.

Dinner is modest, as usual, comprised of food that can be eaten quickly and efficiently. There is wine, because none of them ever can get through a family dinner without wine.

Luke and Leia discuss the disturbances in mining colonies near the unknown regions— Ben hears the words “First Order,” and “Stormtroopers” as well as mention of someone named “General Hux” before tuning out and listening in on Rey’s conversation with his father.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Rey sounds absolutely enthralled.

“All Hutts are dangerous. But they’re the ones to go to if your goal is turning a profit.”

“That sounds thrilling.” she proclaims, casting Ben a look over her shoulder that’s almost accusatory. “How come you never take me anywhere fun?”

He stares at her. “Fun like _Nal Hutta_?”

“Or Mon Calamari. Or Moraband. Or anywhere.”

“Shut up and eat your dinner.” he snaps. “I’m not taking you to fucking _Moraband_.”

“Language,” says Luke, drolly, from the end of the table.

“Come on, Ben.” says his father. “Take the poor kid off-world.”

“I’m going to! Soon! Just not to fucking Moraband.”

“What year is this?” asks Leia, in a carrying voice, indicating the wine. She gestures with her glass, and some sloshes out and spills on the table cloth.

Luke responds with the same transparent, overdrawn enthusiasm, reaching across the table to mop up the stain with the train of his robe. “Oh, do you like it? I’m not much for dry reds, myself, but this little number came all the way from Naboo—”

“Dad,” says Ben, seriously, “Stop giving her bad ideas.”

“Han?” Rey yanks on his sleeve. “Finish your story?”

“Right— so I’m halfway out of orbit and I’m running out of fuel, with a missing cannon and a broken navigation system, and this guy is gaining on me—“

A part of Ben is livid they’ve come _today_ of all days— when he’s already at the end of his rope with her and she’s still at the top of her game, prepared to paint him as the villain and sway his parents to her side.

Another part of him is delighted they like her so much. Maybe he and his father will have something to talk about now.

“We’ve got to bring Poe with us next time we come round.” Han suggests, somewhere around his fourth glass of wine. “He’d love her.”

His mother rolls her eyes and looks at Ben knowingly. For a moment, he worries she can feel the heat of his jealousy searing through the walls he’s put up, feel the bitter, rankling sense of entitlement he has over what will never be his. And at the same time— the guilt, the insecurities, the cloying, nagging voices in his head reminding him of his own inadequacy— because why would Rey ever want him when she can have a starfleet captain, when she can have _any_ man she wants, why would she ever choose him, with his big ears and crooked teeth and bizarre, disproportionate features and the voices in his head—

Then his mother breaks his gaze and looks back at her plate. “Poe is busy, dear.” she says. “He’s leading the fleet. He can’t just up and leave work.”

_Thank you, mother._

She her eyes flit from his to the ceiling, lazily, as if to say _I don’t know what you’re talking about._

Ben sends Rey to bed after her second glass of wine. He never lets her drink, even on special occasions— but his father had insisted.

“She’s young, Benny.” He’d said, clapping him on the back and filling Rey’s glass to the brim. “Let her have fun.”

And the alcohol didn’t make her brash, or stupid, or petty, the way it always did his father. It just made her drowsy. Maybe a bit handsy.

She puts her hand on Ben’s knee under the table and sways back and forth in her seat, her eyes glassy and her expression endearingly blank. Her head drifts onto his shoulder. His uncle gives him a strange look.

Ben pawns her off on Luke first chance he gets, and his uncle escorts her back to her room.

Ben and his mother make idle chit-chat while they wait for Luke’s return. Ben is doing well. Leia is having a tough time at work. Ben doesn’t mind Rey, much. Leia thinks she’ll do him good.

And for the love of all that was good and holy, would he at least _trim_ his hair?

His parents leave as quick as they came. His mother has somewhere to be. His father has somewhere to pretend to be.

Han awkwardly claps his shoulder and shakes his hand. Leia courteously waits for Rey to depart before dragging him down by his shirt collar and smattering his face in kisses.

Luke wrangles them both into bone-crushing hugs and hastens them back aboard their shuttle, scampering about and rattling off a checklist of objects they may have left behind even as the ramp is closing.

“Well, that was fantastic,” he remarks, obliviously, as the shuttle takes of, ratcheting perilously into the dark sky. “I miss those guys.”

“Yeah.” says Ben. “Me too.”

They wait until the glint of the shuttle has dissolved into the liquid-black grasp of the clouds overhead. They stand there for a moment in silence, listening to the waves lapping feebly at the sand in the distance.

If Ben closes his eyes and concentrates, he can sense Rey breathing.

“Ben…” begins Luke, his tone ominously nonchalant.

For one panic-stricken moment, Ben thinks he wants to _talk about it._

“I know you’re worried... about taking Rey off world for the first time.”

“Yes,” he says, relieved. “She’s too impulsive. She doesn’t listen. Those traits don’t fare well in combat.”

“I can’t argue with that.” says Luke, pliantly. His head is still turned skywards, an uncertain mix of peace and apprehension crossing his features. “I… I had an idea. And I _know_ you won’t take advantage…”

Ben’s eyes narrow. “What?”

“There’s this…” He clears his throat awkwardly. “Your parents and I. We’re talking. And. Well, see, they came to find me first— there were things we needed to discuss.”

He feels a surge of bitter satisfaction. He knew it. They never came _just_ to see him. There is always another reason.

“There’s this group called the First Order.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Well. Um.” Luke coughs. “We need someone to. Coruscant.”

“Wait, what?” Ben stares at him. “What about Coruscant?”

Luke sighs, heavily. “Look, it’s a whole thing. Every so often, groups like this crop up near the unknown regions and the Senate gets skittish. They just want a few Jedi to make an appearance in the city. Walk around. Maybe drop in on a debate or two.”

“To what effect?” Ben guffaws.

“They say it’s to maintain an appearance of order and authority.” says Luke. “Truthfully, I think they just want to look like they’re doing something.”

“So you’re sending me and Rey?”

There’s a lengthy, uncomfortable pause.

Ben feels his eyebrows inching up onto his hair.

“You weren’t my first— I normally wouldn’t let… it’s just that it’s safe.” Luke presses his thumb between his brows. “It’s inarguably going to be very safe. And you were holding out for something low-risk.”

“Is that all?” Ben asks, feeling all at once very fond and exasperated. “You want Rey and I to go to Coruscant and pretend we’re working?”

“And maybe meet a few diplomats. But essentially, yes.” Says Luke, looking longingly over at the courtyard pond like he wants to fling himself into it. “But… you would be alone with Rey. Over the course of several days, and...”

Ben feels a sudden, guilty flood of nervous excitement.

“And it has come to my attention…” he coughs. “You…”

_Can’t be trusted around Rey._

The words hang in the air, and Ben hates him for them.

“So why not send a droid with us?” he says, coldly. “Or are you worried I’ll molest that too?”

“Ben, it isn’t that I don’t _trust_ you.” Says Luke. “It’s just that your feelings for her are often…” here, he looks almost in pain, “... very loud. And she’s your charge. She’s not in a position where she can actually _say_ no to you—“

Ben scoffs. “Yes, Rey is very obedient.”

“Look, you wanted a safe, low-key assignment.” Says Luke. “Forgive me for being accommodating. This assignment is about as safe and low-key as it gets. Do you want it or not?”

“Yes.” says Ben. Maybe just a little too hastily.

“Fine.” Luke grouses. “Keep your hands off of Rey, or I’ll reassign her.”

There’s a silence more uncomfortable than the one that settled when his father asked him how Bazine was doing. Bazine— who he had stopped seeing nearly a year ago.

“I trust you, Ben.” Says Luke, after a while. “I mean this as a sign of goodwill.”

Ben snickers. “I’m flattered.”

 

 

He walks past her room on his way to his own.

He lingers on the walkway to savor the little tap-tap-tap of her beating heart. Her breathing like a butterfly’s wingbeat. Soft, gentle, tentative. Almost apologetic. He feels her fingers twisting into hand-woven blankets and the delicate catch of her breath as she begins to sneeze. He closes his eyes and he sees her; the soft, fleecy, _propper_ nightgown his mother sent with its respectably-placed neckline and little capped sleeves.

Rey mumbles something in her sleep and stretches. She yawns like a kitten; soft and meek, showing the pink of her tongue.

_She will die._ The voices say.

Straightforward.

Simple.

Matter-of-fact.

Ben’s eyes snap open and he sees the skyline; a harsh, soulless, glare of darkness and pinpricks of distant light. He loses his footing and skids down the slope of the narrow, shell-strewn path. There is a wrenching pain in his chest and a soreness in his throat. An ache behind his eyes. “ _No._ ” he snarls.

_Yes._ They say.

_Suddenly._

_Horribly._

_She will die. Soon. You cannot save her._

“No.” he says to no one. “You’re lying.”

_There is a way._

_There is still time._

“No.” he says, louder, more forcefully. He swings his fist in an arc and brings it across his temple. “ _Stop it._ ”

_You know the way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sort of an Anindala parody/throwback. Don't kill me (:


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is **obnoxiously** long. Enjoy <3

Rey isn’t in her room when he comes to pick her up the next morning.

They’re setting off for Coruscant bright and early, for no real reason other than that Ben wants a break. He searches campus and finds her with Luke and the younglings, sitting in a thatch of glossy-green grass in the courtyards, clumped together in a haphazard circle, rolling a ball back and forth.

“Hello Ben.” Rey looks up over her shoulder and grins when she sees him. “We’re having circle time.”

“I can see that.” he ignores the gaping stares of the younglings.

“You’re tall,” one of the children comments mildly, before turning to his neighbor and reaffirming in a carrying whisper, “He’s tall.” 

A few others point.

“Come on, Rey.” he says. “Get your things. Let’s go.”

Luke recaptures the younglings’ attention passively, with promises of cookies and extended play time in exchange for good behavior. He sounds like he’s negotiating with criminals.

Rey looks up at him. She looks at the circle of younglings. She looks back up at him. “Can I stay for nap time?”

“No.”

Rey rolls her eyes and dejectedly acquiesces, rising and bidding her tiny circle of disciples farewell.

“Byeeeee Reeeeey.” They all say in a symphonic whine.

Luke gives him a stern look over the top of Rey’s head.

Ben smirks back. Just to get him riled.

He puts his arm around Rey’s shoulders.

 

 

“Can I pilot?” asks Rey.

Ben hesitates. He’d been planning on flying them to Coruscant-- not because he wants to show off for her, or anything like that. Purely logistical. He’s a practiced hand at flying. He’s been doing it a long time.

“Yeah,” he says, and her face lights up.

He unbuckles his seat belt and then--

Rey is in his lap. Rey is _in his lap_ and it isn’t his fault this keeps happening, he didn’t ask for any of this, it feels so unfairly good, maybe if he tilts his hips up just a little she won’t notice--

“Thanks.” she twists in his arms and nuzzles her cheek against his. Brisk and short-lived as it is, he knows he’s back in her good graces.

It’s a short flight, because the force is boundlessly merciful.

They touch down in the city outskirts mid-day. The term “outskirts” is relative. The city doesn’t really ebb. It exists in every square inch of the planet. Coruscant is just as much of a grimy, glittering, starstruck shipwreck as it was when he saw it last. Little comet-trails of light blur together into ribbons of brilliant color, winding through the grid work of the streets. Dark, hulking buildings loom out of the glare.

“Luke messaged me earlier.” Says Ben, as the unboard, carrying two lightweight rucksacks between them. “Threepio has reserved rooms for us at a hotel downtown.”

“Where are we going after that?”

“We have a few meetings.” he says. “A conference, or something. I’m not sure. I think the point of this assignment is just to be seen in the city, establishing order, or something.”

“I like it here.” Rey announces. “It’s pretty.”

He’s not sure he sees the appeal.

The city sprawls out before them endlessly; a gleaming, drunken stretch of urban calamity and self-righteous order, tall, stately buildings with important sounding names fringed with shady casinos and pubs.

All at once, there are too many people on the street. Ben’s been to Coruscant dozens of times, but never with someone so careless or accident-prone as Rey.

She doesn’t see why traffic laws should apply to her. She’s developed a terrifying habit of bolting out into the street every time the mood strikes her.

“What the fuck are you _doing_?”

“I want to see what’s over there.” She says. “Don’t worry. The speeders will watch for me.”  
From then on, he makes her hold his hand, no matter how she hangs on his arm or squirms to get out of his grasp.

She wants to see the Senate building before their first appointment.

Then she wants to see the monorail. The academies. The monuments. The park.

She drags him all over the city and he lets her.

They miss their first scheduled meeting with some obscure hodgepodge of diplomats, and then he second with some Corellian ambassador. They do make their third appointment, to Ben’s great relief and pride; a televised conference with a few vaguely familiar senators that may be his mother's friends.

They are a bit late to that one. But at least they show up.

Then they go back to the hotel. After a long day of flying and fending off questions about the First Order-- which he’s neither informed enough nor qualified to answer anyway-- all Ben wants is to go back to his room and sleep.

Rey tries to come with him.

She’s probably not up to her usual tricks. Her nose is pressed against his shirtsleeve, her eyelids fluttering sleepily, and in all probability she’s just too tired to realize what’s going on.  
He unlocks the door to her room and she tries to pull him in with her.

“No, no, honey.” He steadies her with one hand. “I’m across the hall.”

Rey gives one single, clunky nod. She tips her head back and commands, petulantly— “Kiss.” Her eyes fall shut.

Ben doesn’t think about it. He ducks his head. It’s little more than a brush of their lips; sweet, chaste, almost familial.

He pulls back and guides her inside. “No,” he says, unhooking her fingers from the front of his shirt. “I’m going back to my room.”

She grumbles and sits down on the bed.

He leaves her there and locks the door behind him. He goes back to his room and showers and lies down and doesn’t rub himself off against the mattress thinking of her.

He doesn’t do it twice.

He does sleep, though. For a rare, unusual, eight-hour stretch of dreamless bliss.

They attend a meeting that next morning almost exclusively because it’s nearby a play Rey wants to see. They skip the next appointment entirely and then tell Threepio over comms that it’s because the monorail broke down. They go to a diner instead, and Ben lets her have ice cream for lunch.

She’s never had ice cream before. He tries to warn her it melts fast, but Rey is adamant about  wanting to savor it, and taking only the smallest of bites, because “it’s just so pretty, how does anyone eat it?” And offering spoonfuls to everyone from Ben to the waitress to the other patrons at the lunch counter.

They go to art shows and plays and museums. Ben had forgotten he came from money. Easy to forget, when you live on an old volcanic strip of land in the middle of nowhere on an ocean planet with only an ancient weapon and a straw sleeping mat to your name.

They see an exhibit of Queen Amidala’s assorted regalia, including her wedding dress. They see the building where Mace Windu fell through a window to his death. They see the capitol, and she walks along the railing that borders the veranda while he holds her hand to steady her. It’s only a short distance between the railing and the ground below, but some of the bushes are thorny, so Ben is being careful.

“What do you want to do next, Sweetheart?”

He’s being a little less careful, now that they’re away from prying eyes. A little less professional. He’s using endearments he shouldn’t use and touching her more. More specifically, touching her hair. And her lower back. And, that one time, her hips.

She beams down at him and swings their hands together. “Let’s go somewhere Master Luke wouldn’t approve of.”

He can’t help it. He grins up at her. All overwhelming dimples and crooked teeth, he’s sure. 

“Seedy back-alley cantina it is.”

She hops down from the railing.

 

 

He’s taking it too far. That’s his fault. This is on him.

It’s one thing to take her out on the town. It’s another thing entirely to teach her to drink.

But now he’s just flirting with her. Putting his arm around her shoulders and lounging back on the settee with her, pressing his lips to his ear to tell her “ace of spades” or “six of clubs.”

She’s awful at cards. She likes to think the rules are subjective. They’re not. He’s tried to explain to her that throwing a hand down and announcing “poker” does not mean she’s actually won. She won’t hear it. She’s having a grand old time.

“Can I have a sip of that?” she’d asked, indicating his glass of Corellian neat. A favorite of his father’s he had an unfortunate taste for. She’d been drinking some harmless, syrupy berry concoction he’d ordered for her that was mostly sugar and ice. He’d given her a sip. A _sip._

Now, she wasn’t drunk, exactly. But she was acting buzzed. Giggling, nuzzling into his neck, trying to crawl into his lap in front of everyone else in the cantina.

“I have poker,” she crows triumphantly, tossing a handful of red cards onto the table.

The men they’re playing against-- all stocky, burly, dangerous-looking men, albeit good sports-- look between each other confusedly. Then they go on with the game.

When the game ends, Rey happily tosses Ben’s money at the bug-eyed alien in the corner and slides off his knee.

“Dance with me?” she pulls on his arm. The music has taken a softer, slower shift. There are a few patrons waltzing drunkenly around the cantina, mostly without partners.

He can tell her no. He can. He’s done it before, plenty of times.

“Just one song.” he says. It’s all very assertive. Miles would be impressed.

She smiles like a cat that’s just swallowed a bird.

They walk out onto the crowded mass of unsteadily swaying drunks, clutching each other in random pairs and moving out of tune with the music. They’re all dull and common-looking, and the elitist in him feels a bristle of irritation every time they brush shoulders.

Rey doesn’t seem to mind. She’s swaying with the ear-grating music.

Ben puts his hands on her waist and she stands limply, awaiting instruction.

“Wrap your arms around me.” he says.

There. That’s his fault too. He should have said ‘put your hands on my shoulders.’

With a dramatic swing of her arms, Rey flings her elbows around his neck. “Now what?”

He rocks them side to side. “This is pretty much it.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. I learned a lot of actual dancing when I was a kid,” he confides, lowering his forehead to hers so she can hear over the clamor. “But I can’t remember any of it. Don’t tell my mother.”

“This is easier.” she says. “I like this.” She presses in closer, so her hips are flush against his thigh. If he just bent his knee a little--

He clears his throat and jerks his head back up. “Keep your back straight.” he uses his teacher voice. The one he uses when he’s correcting her form. Distant. Professional. “And don’t look at your feet.”

Rey inches closer.

He realizes, with a flood of excitement and annoyance, that she’s actually _arching her back._

She’s trying to force his hands lower. She wants him to grab her ass.

“No one's around.” She begs. “I won’t tell anyone, I  swear I won’t tell anyone—“

“Rey.” He catches her hands and tries to pry her away, fighting to hold her at arm's length.

“We can go back to the hotel.” She says, talking softer and faster. “We have hours before we have to go back--" 

“Stop it!” he snaps. His fingers dig into her waist. “Stop it, stop it, _stop it!_ " How many times do I have to _peel_ you off of me before you get the fucking message? I don’t _want_ to go bed with you.”

He hears the echo of his own voice in his ears, and the words he's said begin to register.

Rey unwraps herself from him and takes a step back.

He blinks, and she’s on the other side of the room.

Ben might shove some people over as he chases her out into the alleyway. He’s not sure. When he comes to his senses it’s only after he’s crashing into a rain-slicked alleyway so narrow he has to stand at an angle just to fit.

“Rey--” he calls out.

She’s standing just outside the door, looking pitiful.

He catches her, hand locked in a crushing grip around her wrist. “Don’t run off.” he says, sternly. She ignores him.

“Hey.” he chucks her under the chin. “Look at me. You don’t just run off whenever you--”

She swats his hand away. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a goddamn infant.” her eyes are bleary with unshed tears. 

“Don’t act like one, then.”

She groans-- an obnoxious, childish, inarticulate noise that startles him so much he jumps. “Take me home!” she shrieks. “I want out of this place!”

He stares at her. There’s a moment of livid silence.

Water spills down from the gutters overhead and splatters on the gravel underfoot. There’s the whiz of speeders and the steady grind of his teeth.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Sweetheart.” he says, at long last. “You did nothing wrong.”  
She likes when he calls her ‘sweetheart.’ It always calms her down.

The bond sears and stings like a snapped rubber band.

“Take me back to the hotel.” says Rey. She doesn’t look at him.

 

 

Ben lies awake in his bed.

He listens to Rey crying across the hall.

It comes off her in shockwaves.

Pain. Inadequacy. Abandonment.

If only she were softerprettiersweeter he would have her. If she were better behaved. If she did things the first time he asked.

She cries like a little kid. Loudly, messily. With all her heart.

Ben gets out of bed and pads barefoot out into the hallway. He wills the locks to click into place. The door opens.

Rey doesn’t cease crying. She’s lying in a huddled mass at the top of her bed, cocooned in blankets and sobbing like it’s the end of the world.

“Babygirl.” He says.

She doesn’t look at him.

Ben climbs into bed with her, wriggling under the covers and pulling her against his chest. She struggles like she doesn’t really want to be let go.

He kisses her temple, still tacky with tears, and bundles her up in his arms. “You know you’re a good girl, Rey.” He says, smacking another kiss to the top of her head. “You’re _my_ good girl.”

“So why won’t you fuck me?” She sniffles.

She says “fuck” so delicately, with a certain, distinctly ignorant undertone that tells Ben she has a radical misunderstanding of what the word really means.

He opens his mouth to give an explanation, but finds he had none.

Why _won’t_ he fuck her?

Because it clashes dramatically with the Jedi philosophy?

Because Luke thinks he’s taking advantage?

Hokey old religions.

Batty old men.

Voices in his head.

And it’s suddenly all very clear.

“Do you know what you’re getting yourself into, little girl?” he asks, quietly.

She looks him squarely in the eye and confidently shakes her head. “No.” she says. As if it’s of no importance.

He thinks of what the voices have told him. Have been telling him.

He thinks of all he has to lose.

Ben swallows hard, and pauses before speaking. “One time.” he says. “Do you understand?”

She brings her forehead close to his and nods, slowly.

“One time. And then never again.” he says.

“And then never again.” she repeats back to him.

“And you can’t tell anyone.”

She nods frantically. “Never.”

He kisses her.

Rey doesn’t hold still. She bucks and squirms. She fidgets. She tries to take off her clothes. She tries to take off his clothes. He lets her.

Ben wants to take his time to look at her and run his hands over her but Rey wants everything _now_.

The first time he takes her is like teaching her how to swim.

She gasps and flails and panics and clutches at his shoulders, head thrown back, pleading “Ben, _Ben,_ ” like there’s any danger he’ll let her slip beneath the surface.

“Shhhh. Shhhh. I’ve got you, honey.” He slides in his littlest finger inside her, knuckles twisting around the gusset of her underwear.

Her body jerks, almost violently. “ _Ben_!”

“You’re okay.” he pets her. “Hey-- hey, you’re okay--”

She moves her hips around, blinking very rapidly in that startled, bemused way she does when he first wakes her up in the morning. She’s getting used to the feeling.

He trails wet kisses along her breastbone. He plays with her tits like a teenager, like it’s the first time he’s seen them. Sucking her in pulses and flicks of his tongue. “Two?” he murmurs.

Her brows crumple and arch sporadically. Her tongue pokes out of the corner of her mouth like it does when she’s concentrating very hard. She nods.

Slowly, gingerly, Ben eases his two middle fingers inside her.

She grips his wrist and clenches her teeth. “That pinches.” she says, irritably, as if he’s done it on purpose.

“Sorry, sorry.” Ben feels a hot flush of embarrassment and a pang of heartwrenching guilt. What is he doing? What good can come of this?

Even as he thinks this he’s leaning down, gangly knees hanging awkwardly off the bed, kicking things off the nightstand, bracing his arms on either side of her hips and taking her clit into his mouth.

She screams like he’s murdering her.

Ben knows he isn’t any good at this. He’s clumsy and imprecise. Far too eager. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing. But Rey doesn’t seem to care. She’s actually sobbing; deep, wrenching, pitiful cries of sensation as her head rolls around on the pillow.

He gives her a break after a while, and climbs back to the top of the mattress to watch her, teary and flushed, hiccupping, chest heaving with every shaky inhale.

He climbs on top of her and puts his face in the pillow.

“Hey.” She sounds almost offended. “Look at me.”

He does. She looks like an angel. Wide-eyed and rosy, lips slick, neck lovemarked.

“I love you.” The words come spilling out. “Rey. I love you.”

She nods, very fast, as if he’s saying something very urgent and important. “I love you.” she says back.

He holds both her hands and pushes inside.

It’s at a bad angle. It’s awkward. It hurts her.

“I love this.” Rey kisses his ear. “Oh, Benny. I love this.”

She’s too tight. She’s crushing him. He’s going to come.

“I’d fucking die for you.” he’s babbling. He’s not making sense. She’s slick and tight and pulsing in time with every bemused flutter of her eyelashes, and he’s not sure he won’t go _blind._ “I won’t let anything take you from me.”

She’s nodding, like she understands, wide eyes locked on him.

“They’re wrong.” he says, because he’s too far gone to know to keep quiet.

The voices.

“They’re wrong.”

She pets at his back and makes pinched, confused faces while he works himself inside her. 

“I’d destroy all of it.” he swears against her shoulder, pushing himself into her so hard he moves her up the bed. “I’d burn the whole fucking galaxy before I let that happen. It _won’t._ ”

Rey talks back to him, probably because she thinks that’s what you’re supposed to do. She probably doesn’t know what she’s saying, or why it’s _filthy_. She’s just giving voice to every thought that wanders through her head. Like always.

“Your cock feels so big inside me.” And, “I love this. I _love_ this.”

He pulls out with seconds to spare, making a mess of himself. Rey keens and sighs, ghosts of tear tracks still gleaming salt-sticky on her cheeks. She rolls over.

“Don’t.” she shoves his hand away when he reaches between her legs.

“Baby-- you didn’t--”

“It’s too much.” she shakes her head, eyes pinched closed. “Too much.”

He stares at her, propped up at an angle on his elbow, sticky with cum and sweat. She’s glowing. Wrapped in sheets like something ethereal.

“I love you so much, Rey.” he says. His voice shakes.

She yawns and stretches, nestling into the covers with a contented smile. “Yep.” she says, dreamily. “Lie down with me.”

He does. He pulls her into his arms with trembling hands and holds her till she falls asleep.

Nothing will take her.

He’ll burn the galaxy before he lets her die.

He’ll destroy all of it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Sorry for any typos, I will go back over and edit this more carefully soon, I just wanted to get it up ASAP because I know I haven't posted in a while. Thanks so much for reading! <3

They arrive home a week later than they were scheduled to. Luke makes no comment.

He greets them when the ship touches down, robes fluttering in the faint sea breeze, expression blankly happy. As if he’s genuinely glad to see them.

Ben’s not sure he trusts it.

“We’re late.” he acknowledges, right off the bat. “I don’t know if you got my message; one of the ambassadors we missed a meeting with wanted to reschedule—”

“No harm done.” Luke waves his hand carelessly and fixes Rey with a brilliant, boyish grin. “Hey there, City Girl.” He says. “How’d you like Coruscant?”

“It was very nice.” says Rey. She avoids looking at Ben, but he sees the slightest twist of a smile in the corner of her mouth.

And for half a second, everything’s okay.

For half a second, it’s all in his head, and he’s not going to lose her forever. It’s ridiculous to think that he could. Rey is alive. He’s not sure she _can_ die. There’s no historical evidence to go off of.

They go up the walkway to the school together. Rey skips ahead of them, yelling for her friends. There’s a rustle in the orchard somewhere, the sound of Gina’s voice, and Rey darts after it, bolting out of sight.

Ben and Luke walk towards the academy together at a slow, leisurely, old-person pace. Ben tries not to drag his feet. Resists the urge to rip the leaves off of trees as they go.

He doesn’t know what to say.

“So. You brought her back in one piece.” says Luke. Finally. Nonchalantly. As if he’d just taken _anyone_ on a two-week trip to Coruscant.

“Yeah.” says Ben, eloquently.

“I think it did her good.” says Luke. “Never thought I’d say that. Coruscant’s crowded. Busy, messy, dismal. But I can’t say for certain it hasn’t ever done anyone good.”

Ben’s stomach plummets. Luke, _knows._ Surely he must know. He means the rosy, orgasmic glow in Rey’s cheeks, the way her hair looks more mussed than windswept. He’s filled with panic and sheer bewilderment. Because— Luke can’t be pleased, can’t possibly be pleased, even if he’s only guessing, even if he isn’t aware of the sheer _caliber_ of her deflowering—

“She’s a city girl.” says Luke, seemingly satisfied. “I should send her with Remy and Gina next time they go into the city.”

Ben feels a flood of relief melting away at his bemused panic. His confusion dissipates.

Of course Luke doesn’t know. And if he suspects, he’s not asking.

Maybe it was a gesture of goodwill after all.

If it is, it’s woefully misplaced.

Since there “only time” in that hotel on Coruscant, Ben has had her on every flat surface of the ship and then some. He and Rey have christened every square inch of it. They were very thorough.

“Last time?” she asked, an hour before they were scheduled to land, obediently holding up her arms so he could take off her shirt.

“Yes.” he had said, falling to his knees, hooking his thumbs under the waistband of her pants and tugging her to the edge of the pilot’s seat. “Last time. Never again.”

“Never again.” she’d chirped, gleefully.

He’s had her on the floor of the galley. In the pilot's chair. In every bunk. In the engine room. He tried to show her how to go down on him, and she took on the challenge with as much enthusiasm as she approached force training. He tried to go down on her again and failed spectacularly. She was very nice about it. She petted his hair and repositioned his fingers, and between a half-hour of gentle instruction and concentration on her part, she came in his hand.  
She tried to go down on him. Ben’s not sure if she was any good at it. He was too busy concentrating on holding his hips still and not pushing down on her head to really take note of her technique. He _is_ sure he liked it. He liked it a lot.

He’s jerked from his reverie by the words “Rey” and “special.” He likes hearing those words in the same sentence. He often uses them in the same sentence himself. Miles says he, quote, “tends to go on about it.”

But Luke doesn’t just want to gush over Rey’s precociousness. He’s talking nonsense. He’s just said something about her _graduation._

“I want to take Rey to Kyber.” says Luke, while Ben’s world is ripped out from under him. “Sometime within the next year.”

It’s like the atmosphere has collapsed in on itself. It’s like the sun is burning out.

Luke is saying. Luke can’t be saying.

“I want her to graduate early.”

“No.” the word is out of Ben’s mouth like a visceral, violent, knee-jerk reaction. “ _No._ ”

“Ben.” Luke begins, carefully, as if Ben is a bomb that might go off. Like he always does, when he senses he’s was getting very angry.

“She _just_ started.” Ben tries to keep the petty, childish whine from his voice. “She isn’t even out of her teens.”

“Ben. She’s ready.”

He knows she is. Rey’s been ready since the moment he met her. She’s so far beyond all of her peers. So far beyond his reach.

It’s all his fault. He shouldn’t have bragged about her so much. He shouldn’t have drawn attention to her natural talent, her prowess, he shouldn’t have fucking advertised she was so far beyond her years.

“I’ll send her out on a mission with you to supervise.” says Luke, compromisingly. “We’ll see how she does.”

“Oh, will you?” Ben feels a surge of haughty, righteous anger. Who does his uncle think he is, to assign _his_ padawan--

“It’s nothing decisive. If it goes well, it won’t mean anything. I want her to stay with you for at least a year or so more anyway.” Luke sighs. His pace drags out into a long, tired, old-man shuffle. “But I can’t just keep you two together forever, Ben. And you can’t keep teaching her lightsaber forms with wooden staffs forever.”

“She’ll learn when she’s ready.” Ben snaps.

“She is ready.” says Luke. His voice is oddly gentle. Maybe he feels sorry for all he said before they left.

But Ben can’t sense any guilt. Only certainty. Cool, emotionless certainty. Because Luke knows he is right.

“I’m not.”

It’s a stupid thing to say, but Luke doesn’t comment. He just looks worried.

He thinks this is nothing of consequence— just Ben being his usual self; aggressive, clingy, paranoid, melodramatic. The enigmatic ticking time bomb who won’t adjust well to having his Padawan graduate early.

Ben’s only worry is that his Padawan won’t live long enough to graduate.

“Give me more time with her?” He barely manages to make it a suggestion, instead of a plea.

“We’ll see.” says Luke, warily.

 

 

“Ben— Ben!”

“I’ve got you, honey.”

“I’m sinking.” She tips her head all the way back to keep her mouth above the water.

“I’ve got you.” Ben reaches down and pulls her onto his knee under the water, propping her up.

Rey scrabbles at his shoulder, gasping. Her toes just barely scrape the top of the sandbar here. 

White caps and riptides tug at the sea, waves pouring into each other. The clap of the water startles her.

“I told you not to go out so far.” He grumbles, tugging them in toward the shore.

She kicks, weakly, helping them along. “It looks so easy when you do it.”

“Here.” He hooks an arm around her waist and settles her on his hip, setting his feet flat on the sandbar.

Propped up, Rey clambers higher up his side, both hands pressing down on his shoulder so she can look around at the sea.

The ocean claps around them in little bowl-sized ripples, splicing the foam into a netted pattern. The shore seems to rock on the horizon like a sandy little boat. Shades of blue collapse into each other.

Rey sighs and slides back down to his hip, wet and wriggling. “It’s so beautiful.” She says, dreamily. “Everything is so beautiful.”

She puts her head on his shoulder and rolls her hips.

Ben sucks his teeth. “Rey, no.” He says, sternly. As sternly as he can manage.

She only laughs at him. There’s a prick of pain and heat as her little teeth clamp down on his ear.

He makes a disgruntled, embarrassing noise and twists his head away. “Rey.” His voice is pitched. He clears his throat. “Rey. What did I say?”

“Nothing of any relevance.” She trills.

Which is what he said to her earlier, when she asked what he and Luke were talking about.

“Hey.” He snaps, as she wriggles around to his front and lines up their hips. “I meant it.” He grips her waist and holds her still. She pouts, then smirks, then ruts down onto his half-hard cock. Deliberate eye contact. Just begging for trouble.

“There’s no one around.” She hangs off his neck and smacks a kiss against his cheek.

“Rey.” He gets a handful of her hair and tugs gently, easing her off him. “I meant it.”

“Yup.” She shakes free of his grip and hangs off him, head thrown back, laughing uproariously. 

Like a child.

Because she is a child. And this is all a game to her.

He wedges his thigh between her legs and drags her clit back and forth across it. Her smile melts off her face.

He lowers his teeth to her ear. “Get your sassy little ass back to shore _now._ ”

Her lashes flutter stupidly for a fraction of a second. When she looks up and meets his eyes, he sees the muscles in her neck tense as she swallows nervously. She unclamps her legs from his knee and splashes off toward the sand.

He keeps pace with her, never letting her get too far ahead of him. She flails and kicks fiercely enough to scare off every shark within a hundred mile radius.

Ben grabs her ankles every so often and laughs when she shrieks. He prays this cove is as secluded as he thinks it is.

He carries her the rest of the way inland, when she gets tired and anxious and her lips are blue from cold. He carries her back to the gritty, rain-hewn strip of sand that borders the cove in a perfect crescent, sun-warmed and rocky. He lays her down.

“You can’t act like things are different between us. You still have to do as I say.” he says, as gently as he can, unwrapping her clothes. “You can’t act like we’re… we’re friends. Nothing has changed.”

She blinks up at him, innocently confounded. “But things have changed.”

“No they haven’t.” he says. “Remember?” he pins her wrist with one hand and plays with her tits with the other. Her little back cinches into an arch. Her eyes screw shut. “Because I’ve _never touched you._ ” he meets her gaze purposefully and sucks a nipple into his mouth.

“Right.” she says, breathlessly. “Nothing’s changed.”

He holds her down against the sand and pushes inside of her. Slow, rough, steady. He doesn’t jerk his hips as fast as he wants to. He doesn’t just thrust and batter. He moves slow. In and out, push and pull, the hot, wet, filthy drag of his cock sliding in and out of her vice-like grip. Sand rasps between their bodies and there’s no pillow to prop beneath her hips the way she likes, and the angle is all wrong and they’re both shivering, dripping cold salt-water.

But it’s sex on the beach. It’s perfect.

Afterwards, while they’re lying together with one of his legs wedged between hers, and she’s dozing against his chest, she brings up his uncle.

Which is a notorious mood killer. But it had to happen sometime.

“No.” he responds, gently. “Never. You know you can’t tell him.”

“I-- I know. But--”

“Listen. Sweetheart.” he chucks her under the chin, and her head bobs up to look at him. Her eyes are so pretty and earnest. Trusting. “Nothing is going to change. Nothing can change. You--” he swallows, “--you can change your mind. About. About us. But you can’t let anyone know. Or...”

Or they’ll take you from me.

Or you’ll die.

He wraps an arm around her skinny shoulders, and she nestles closer.

“Okay,” she says, mildly. Sometimes she’ll give in easy as a ploy to distract him. Sometimes-- and these are farther and fewer between-- she actually means it. He’s not sure which it is.

The voices whisper.

It is not enough.

This is not enough to keep  Rey safe. His presence, his arms around her. His vigilance. His devotion. It won’t save her.

She’s going to die.

But it’s not too late to save her. If you become stronger-- if you gain more power-- there is still time--

“Ben.” She reaches for him.

He presses a kiss to her cold, damp, salty hair. She wriggles contentedly.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you.” he whispers. “I promise.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait! As always, thanks for reading and enjoy!

“Ben, please talk to me.”

He says nothing.

“Ben.” She pushes up from the sofa and comes to stand next to him at the window looking out over the academy courtyards. There’s a point of pressure at the seam of his sleeve. Her nose. 

When she breathes out, it tickles his shoulder. She nuzzles him and tries to duck under his arm, but he keeps his elbows locked. “I’m sorry.” she pleads.

He ignores her.

The academy is quiet, like it only is at dusk. There is no one else in the library, only the faint whir of droids shelving things and knocking into bookcases. High, unglossed rectangular windows splice up the rock walls like gills on a fish, and swampish, sun dappled light filters through.

Nearly an hour ago, Ben and Rey returned from her first off-world assignment.

First and last.

Luke had promised it would be safe. But those “First Order” insurgents turned out to be more than a rag-tag team of troublemakers. The outer-rim mining colony they’d been sent to defend was already mostly overtaken by the time they touched down. No sooner had they landed than the Republic issued a retreat.

Remy and Miles had gone ahead to see if there were any survivors in the collapsing mines. Ben had told Rey and the other padawans to wait on the ship.

Explicitly. He’d taken her shoulders and stooped down to her level. He’d spoken very clearly, and very firmly. He’d said ‘do you understand.’ He’d heard ‘yes sir.’

Only then did he follow Miles and Remy.

It had been chaos. A haze of smoke and carnage. The world was on fire. There were screams, cracks of blasterfire, the sickening thud and splatter of shots landing home.

The mines were rigged with explosives. The tunnels were a maze. It had been chaos-- enemy soldiers indistinguishable from civilians, the soft, ashen give of the ground beneath his feet, the blindness, the smoke crushing down on his lungs like a hot iron.

He’d been about to retreat himself--

And then a little figure ambled into his peripheral. Dazed and tottering. At first, he thought it was a lost child.

But it was Gina.

Gina, Rey’s beloved, troublesome little friend, prowling around the entrance to the mines with an outdated blaster in one hand and a flashlight in the other, posed like a detective on the hunt for clues. She looked back over her shoulder and mouthed something.

Ben saw her, then. Slinking towards Gina as if tiptoeing would make her invisible, her face bright, as if this were all part of some new thrilling game the two of them were playing.

He’d called out to her. “Rey, come here.”

And she’d only wandered further away.

“Rey.” This time, he’d spoke through the bond. He sensed her ears prick up, felt the dip of her chin as her head almost turned.

Then she took off towards the mines.

Ben could _still_ feel the pain in his chest; a sharp, sudden, seizing, heart-stopping surge of panic. Raw. Pure. So strong it almost sent him to his knees.

Because in that moment, he had been sure.

_This is it. This is how I lose her._

“Benny.” Rey picks up his hand and holds it against her hair. He drops it. Stares out the broken library window, watching the warped pane judder in the frame with every lurching gust of wind from the sea. There’s a storm stirring up the water on the sun-bright crest of the horizon. 

Rey sniffles and rolls her head against his chest. She wants to cuddle.

His lungs still smart. His back still aches. He can still feel the ground splintering beneath his feet as he runs into the mine after them, hear their nervous gales of laughter that ended in frightened shrieks as the ground gave out.

He can still feel the teeth-rattling wrench as he grabbed them-- one by her hair, one with the force-- he’s still not sure which-- and dragged them into the shallows, under the arch of a caved-in wall. Gina had a badly bruised knee and some burned hair. Rey had a cut on her arm.  
Ben patched her up afterwards. He cleaned the wound and covered it and didn’t kiss the bandage when he was done.

He’s been ignoring her. It’s the least she deserves.

Remy will probably remember to be angry at Gina at some point. But for now, he’s only _relieved._ Because all’s well that ends well, and “At least they got back safe.”

When Ben had returned back to the ship with the girls, carrying them by the backs of their shirt like kittens, he’d expected Remy to scream at Gina. He wasn’t sure why he expected it. Remy never yelled, unless he was startled or hurt. He certainly never yelled at Gina.

And true to form, Remy hadn’t yelled. He’d only gaped. Tears had cut tracks in the thick film of soot on his face and he’d stood there, shark-eyed and slack-jawed, a blinking, blithering idiot.

Then Ben shoved Gina towards him. He held open his arms, and the girl crumpled into them like a paper doll. Remy startled. His arms went around her.

For a moment, they stood there— Rey still clasping his robes, Ben ignoring her, Remy and Gina rocking on the spot and holding each other, like two victims of a natural disaster slow dancing.   
Stunned. Shellshocked. Glad to be alive.

Ben wasn’t so blinded by sentiment.

Miles, sensing the tension, had laughed uneasily as they all hurried back onto the ship, dodging missile fire and sidestepping landmines every odd step. “You know, _my_ padawan stayed on the ship.” he had commented, and no one-- not even Remy-- managed to laugh.

He had shaken his robes free of Rey’s clutching little fingers and turned towards the cockpit.

She trailed after him, simpering inaudibly.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He hadn’t spoken to her since they got back.

He won’t look at her. He won’t touch her. He’s so angry, he can’t see straight.

It feels like she tried to cheat him out of something. Tried to cheat him out of a lifetime of her with a cheap card trick.

“Please look at me.” She says. “What can I do Ben please I’m sorry--”

“You could have done what I told you.”

“Ben--”

“You could have listened to me.” He says, with such finality her simpering stops short, and she crumpled back into herself helplessly, cries stifled against her palm. “You chose not to.”

“But I _love_ you.” She says, loud and grand, as if this proclamation will save her. “I wanted to help you. And you weren’t letting me help.”

“Help.” He addresses the window. “Is that what you did.”

“I was…” her brow furrows and she stares at his shirt sleeve confusedly. “I was going to help you save--”

“All you did was complicate things. _I_ was going to retreat when I saw you and Gina. Imagine if I hadn’t seen you, what would have happened.”

Rey shuffles her feet and grumbles petulantly.

“What was that?” he can’t believe how calm he sounds. How _under control._

His mother would be so proud.

“Nothing.” she looks down at her feet.

He laughs without humor. “I’m so disappointed in you. I taught you better.”

“ _You_ taught me meditation and calligraphy.” Her voice wavers. “You taught me   
_theory._ All I wanted was a chance to prove I can be a--”

He cuts her off at the quick. He knows where this conversation is going.

He’s had it a million times before.

“Yes, Rey, you sound very sorry.” he grits through his teeth.

“I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Please, Ben.” she tugs on his sleeve again. “Ben. Look at me?”

He stares at the sea. At the fledgling storm on the horizon.

This is wrong of him. He knows this is wrong of him.

It isn’t her fault. It’s his. He should have sensed the danger. He shouldn’t have let her out of his sight. He shouldn’t have trusted Luke.

_We can protect her._ The voices niggle listlessly at his consciousness. Lazy, indifferent, even. As if it’s only a matter of time. _If you were stronger with the force…._

Ben turns to face her. Her hands drop from his sleeve. He glares. She shrinks.

She looks just as she did when she first came to him. Only teary, and marginally less clean. She has tiny papercut-sized scrapes all over, and her clothes are smeared with soot. There’s a film of ash on her hair like fallen snow.

Rey’s head lists side to side haplessly, hands wrung in front of her in supplication. Tears beading. “What can I do?” Her words blur together at the edges.

He melts. Just like that, the voices dissolve into the crash of the waves and the whirring of droids in the background.

“Nothing.” he says.

Her face crumples. He gathers her into his arms.

The first sob wracks her body, and Ben clutches her to him. “It’s okay.” he says, stiffly. He presses a quick, clinical kiss to her forehead. “I’m not angry, it’s okay.”

They sway on the spot for a moment. Rey crying, him petting, both trembling furiously. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m not angry. I forgive you. It’s okay.

Until they’re not trembling anymore. Until they’re moving against each other. Kissing, caressing, biting, undressing. They knock back into the bookshelf. A hundred age-old texts rattle in their fragile spines.

Her knees hitch up around his hips. He grabs her ass and hoists her higher.

Rey’s little fingers knot in his hair and she drags his head back and forth, positioning him how she wants him. She kisses like she eats; voraciously, hungrily, and with teeth.

She twists her head away, scrambling higher up his chest, and he grudgingly moves down to her neck, tasting ash and sweat and tears.

“I’m sorry.” he stammers, at the same time she says, “ _Bed_.”

They stumble against the bookcase again. A few sacred-looking volumes fall and break apart from their bindings where they land.

“Bed.” Rey grips the shelf above her head for leverage and just _shoves_ her hips down against his, so desperate and graceless and _Rey_.

If she keeps this up, he’ll take her on the concrete floor of the academy library. He won’t be able to help himself. His blood is up, he’s still _terrified,_ heart still racing like it was when he first saw her bolt straight into danger. 

Ben pins her to him with one hand on the small of her back, the other carefully prying her legs off his hips. He sets her down and she wobbles.

“Rey.” he takes her young, bright, soot-smeared face in his hands. “Don’t do that again. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” she’s breathless. Her back is arching. She’s still trying to rub against his leg.

“Rey.” he shakes her, once, and very gently. “You listen to me.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t ever do that again.”

She tilts her head up for a kiss. He gives it to her. Long and harsh and scorching. Her skinny arms wind round his neck. She melts into him, and he gathers her up.

He loves her. This bright-eyed little barbarian with a vice-grip on his heart. He loves her. He loves her and loves her.

“Ben.”

He freezes. Rey reacts quicker than he does, jerking away so fast she rattles the bookshelf again, and whole stacks of ancient texts come tumbling down in an ill-timed avalanche.

His uncle sighs from his place in the doorway. “I should have known.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO sorry about the delay on this one, college has been kicking my ass-- the only reason I got done at all was because of the lovely Pastel Wonder's constant support and encouragement <3 <3 <3 Thanks a million buddy, you're the best!!!  
> As always thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!

“Are you leaving?” Rey’s eyes are red. She stands shivering in the doorway, knees knocking together, lips blue from the cold. There’s the smallest sliver of gray on the horizon behind her, a wisp of a storm on a rosy sky.

Ben watches her for a moment, his throat aching with all the things he wants to say to her. Look how beautiful you are. Look how much you’ve changed in a year. I’ll miss you.  
“Are you leaving.” Rey grinds out the words through lips cinched tightly closed across a snarl. She looks livid.

“It might be… for the best.”

Rey’s eyes well. She stomps inside and slams the door behind her. The whole room rattles with the force of it.

“Rey.” his first instinct is to scold her. “Get yourself under control.”

“No.” she kicks over a basket at the foot of his bed and clothes spill out over the floor. “No! I did nothing wrong!”

“Rey.” He blinks around the ache in his eyes. “You need to calm down.”

“No!” her shriek is infantile and terrifying. The cry of a wounded animal.

Because to Rey, “there’s no reason to cry” has never been a good enough reason not to cry.

“Sweetheart,” he holds out his hands to her.

“I hate you!” she shrieks. She grabs the back of a nearby chair and upends a carefully organized stack of quizzes on top of it. He wrote them out for her, painstakingly, one question at a time. She cheated on every one.

Ben stands still and watches. Rey flounces over to his low mattress without box springs, heaped with half-finished afghans she made him. She pulls a fistfull of clothes out of his travel bag and hurls them at him. “Put these away!”

“Rey. I have to go.”

“No you don’t!” she squawks, without looking at him. She pulls another book out of his suitcase and throws it on the floor.

Ben stoops down to pick it up.

“Don’t touch that.” she snaps. She’s holding a picture of him with his mother that she fished out of his suitcase, and is looking around with squinted eyes for the nail it used to hang on. “I put that there cause I want it there.”

“My love,” he tells her, gently. “What do we always say?”

“Shut up!” she claps one hand over her ear and hides her face in her elbow.

“Sweetheart.” he stands and gently eases the picture frame out of her grasp.

She rips the drawer from the bedside table and holds eye-contact before she dumps it out over the floor.

Ben watches her humorlessly from the mantle. “Oh, that’s real mature. You know, the more of my stuff you break, the less I have to pack.”

She throws a book at his head. It clips him in his “karking starship-sized ear.”

She’s a foul-mouthed hellion, but he can’t help but be a little proud. Her aim is impeccable.

From there, Rey careens between pitiful and feral from breath to breath, shrieking the house down one moment and pressing her face into his chest the next.

“Please don’t go.” she says, as Ben tries to maneuver around her to put his shoes in his travel bag. Rey nuzzles and curls her fingers into his robes, clinging to him like a needy child. “I won’t wver be bad again.”

“I have to go, Rey.” he says, his heart jerking in his chest with every word. “I have something important to do.”

“Will you come back?” For a moment, she looks almost sweet. Her lashes flutter and she curls her hands together under her chin, begging prettily.

It makes his insides turn to lead.

Probably not.

Definitely not.

Maybe.

If I live.

“I will try.”

The facade dissipates like ocean mist.

Not good enough.

The minutes drag on eons at a time. She vaults back and forth between fury and misery, and he hovers reluctantly between anger and guilt. He gets three more things into his suitcase. Rey cries and sits on his floor, and Ben falls for it and cuddles her till she’s energized enough to start smashing up his end table.

“I told Luke I’d be gone by sundown.” he tells her, as gently as he can, prying the clothes hanger out of her hands as tentatively as if he were defusing a bomb.

“But why do you have to go?” 

“Because,” he pets her hair with the arm he has wrapped around her. “I just have to. These things happen.”

“No-- no, stay with me.” she holds his robes. “We can…” she wets her lips, “Play games and not go anywhere and I’ll stay your Padawan forever and never become a Jedi, and I’ll study real hard and never do poorly on exams--”

“Rey,” he says.

“I hope you drown.” then, after a moment’s consideration, “Do you have to go?” Her little fists are balled up beneath her chin, head bowed, lip drawn between her teeth. Her eyes are screwed shut the way they are when she’s having a bad dream.

“Rey.” He smooths his hand down through her hair and along her jaw, pinching her chin and turning her face up to his. “Listen. I know this is a lot. I know you’re upset. But this isn’t because of anything you’ve done wrong, aright? There’s… I have to go away for a while. And I’m going to need you to be brave for me, alright?”

Rey gives a single, sudden, violently jerk of her head. He can’t tell if it means yes or no.

He goes on. “I know things are changing fast. But I need you to trust me and listen to me.” His grip tightens just a fraction of an inch. Reminding her of their old agreement. A bond older than time. “I need you to be good for me, Rey.”

She wrenches out of his grip and his him in the chest. “I hate you.” she chokes out. “I hope you never come back I don’t ever want to see you again I hope you die--”

“Rey.”

Tears are rolling down her face in a heart shape, over the apples of her cheeks and into her mouth. She’s trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. “I never loved you anyway,” she says, with a would-be haughty flick of her hair that ends in a shuddering sob. “I was only pretending.”

“Hush.” Ben reaches out for her and she twists out of his reach.

Waves lurch into each other in the distance, creating a languid, haphazard rhythm of water on rocks. The fire pops and snaps from the hearth.

She puts her hands on top of her head and keens. “ _Why_?”

Ben catches her with one hand and manhandles her around to face him. Rey goes slack in his grip like a kitten picked up by the scruff of its neck.

“Where are you going?” She begs, screwing her eyes shut again.

Ben dips his head and presses a kiss to the tip of her freckled, sun-scorched nose.

For a moment, neither of them breathe.

They’re both waiting to see if he’ll answer her question.

“I’m going to take real good care of you.” he murmurs.

Rey lets out a whimper. He can’t tell if its in distress or arousal.

When he puts her on his bed, she rolls onto her side and pulls up her nightgown.

She knows he likes having her this way. He likes the angle. He likes being able to hunch forward and kiss her on the mouth.

Ben presses down on her hip so she’s flat on her back and notches her knees over his elbows. “It’s okay, little one. It’s okay.” he can hear the tears in his voice, but he won’t cry in front of her. It can only upset her.

She likes it this way. She likes when he sets the pace, when she just has to lie there and take it.

“Hold onto the headboard.” he says.

She does.

He licks his fingers and dips his hand between her legs. Her mouth twitches and her eyes snap shut. She doesn’t cry out. She won’t cry out for him again. Somehow he knows it.

“Please don’t be angry with me.” the childish words are out of his mouth before he’s had time to parse them. “Please, Rey--”

She lets go of the headboard and reaches between them, lining up his cock with a certain brusque, careless finesse he never taught her, and sinks down onto it without warning. In a fraction of a second, Ben’s world goes spiraling out of focus. He jerks his hips. Rey sucks her teeth.

“I’m so so sorry--” he breaks off and gasps, stilling inside her. There’s a knife-sharp pain in his throat. “I’ll make it up to you, Rey, somehow, I’ll--”

“No you won’t. Ever. I hate you.” she kicks her legs and bucks back against him. “Don’t bother coming back I don’t want to see you you’re awful and I hate you I _hate_ you--”

She comes in seconds, still barely slick around him, pulsing meek and fluttery. She wrenched it out all on her own. She doesn’t cry out, or even close her eyes.

He feels cheated. This could well be his last time with her. And she doesn’t even let him make her come.

She’s a vengeful little thing, his padawan.

He pulls out and presses back in maybe ten times more. He falls overtop of her, his nose in her long, wild, sand-strewn hair and inhales. He comes. She kicks him out of bed.

Rey won’t let him hold her. “I don’t want to snuggle.” she says, tears choking her facade of indifference. “You’re not allowed to snuggle me anymore. Or touch me. If you touch me ever again I’ll scream.”

She makes good on her threat when he reaches for her hand.

So Ben sleeps on the floor.

It’s hard wood with no blankets. Rey cries through the night. Deep, grown-up, wrenching cries that make the windows tremor.

She finally wears herself out off at dusk, when the first guazy panels of sunlight are peering weekly through the glades and cutting paths through his window panes.

Ben tears out a page of her textbook and leaves her a hasty note in pen overlapping the text. “I’m sorry. I love you. There’s something important I have to do.”

He signs it ‘Love Ben,’ and leaves it on what would be his side of the bed. He kisses her sand-gritty, sweat-dampened hair and watches her body twitch with sobs, as if she’s in the throws of a violent aftershock.

“Benny.” she mews and clutches the blankets.

He tucks her back in and fixes her socks. She always kicks them off in her sleep. He puts water for tea near the hearth and leaves what little money he has on the nightstand, in case she ever needs anything.

He’s stalling. He’s taken too long already.

Rey starts to stir again, and he’s gone before she wakes.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Snoke, in this version, is not the ten-foot monster he is in the films. He’s more like Gollum. Or a sickly, hairless gerbil. Because REASONS.
> 
> Also, thank you for all the support and kind words! (: And thank you for being so patient. I know I take forever to update.

Rey cries bitterly the first five days. She wakes and cries, goes down to breakfast and cries, trains and mediates and sleeps and cries. She doesn’t read or walk along the shore. She doesn’t go to their special place in the library.

Gina tells her she’s not supposed to openly weep in public, so they go to Gina’s room and Rey weeps there.

It seems like a silly rule to Rey. If she’s sad, she should cry. She doesn’t see what everyone else has to do with it. But Gina says it makes the others uncomfortable, which is a thing that she should be considerate of, apparently, and she should always just say she has allergies or something in her eye and excuse herself and come back later when she’s calmed down.  
It’s one of the few rules of polite society Ben neglected to teach her. It never came up.

Gina is a good friend. She sits with her for hours on end with a cheery voice and a stubborn smile. She pets Rey’s hair.

“You’re acting like a baby.” Gina tells her, soothingly. She isn’t without sympathy, but she’s as haughty as ever, and expects Rey to follow suit. “He didn’t stay when you asked him to. So why do you even want him?”

Because he was never going to leave.

She can’t say that anymore, but a part of her still thinks it.

He told her that. Over and over again. Before he even admitted he did not strictly _mind_ her company. “Guess I’m stuck with you,” had turned into “don’t stand so close to the edge” and “don't touch my saber” and “don’t pick up snakes.” Rey can’t quite pinpoint the moment she realized he loved her. He never said it in the beginning. He’d just warned her of danger and snapped at her when she brought up Kyber. He never waxed poetic about how much he loved her.

But he had promised to stay.

She doesn’t have an answer for Gina, but it’s days before Rey will even walk past his room again.

They go to the beach together and sit with their toes in the sand, drinking peach-flavored liquor Gina bullied Remy into “lending” her and having intense one-sided conversations. Gina knows all about breakups. She’s had dozens herself.

“If he were here, we could rip the plating off his ship.” she says, dreamily. “Or spray-paint all the glass.”

“Why would we do that?” Rey wonders. It’s the most she’s spoken since Gina finally managed to drag her out of doors.

“It’s just the done thing.” says Gina, with an air of expertise. “Do you have anything left of his we could burn?”

Rey has some of his clothes, and his blankets and books and some other odds and ends she pilfered from his room. And everything else he ever owned.

“No.” She sits up straight and permits Gina to arrange a wreath of beach-roses on her hair.

“Shame. Maybe we could just torch an effigy or something? Next time we’re in town we’ll have to track down that vendor with the dolls.”

 

He can’t kill Rey’s demons.

But he can kill his own, so he does.

It takes a day to find him. Another month at lightspeed to reach him.

Ben stops trying to make his mind go quiet and lets the world break into pieces behind his eyes. 

He lets the voices lead him to the thing called Snoke.

It’s hidden in the recesses of the galaxy, a few light years from the edge of the map. He finds it on a rock of a planet so far from the stars, there is no light to land by. His touch down is little more than a head-on collision. He can’t see his hand in front of his face.

It’s hidden in a cave where the darkness is as thick and cold as an underground ocean. There is no light, no air.

The voices pitch and ring in his ears.

He moves the craft to the lip of a cave that slopes into the planet’s core, where the icy crust frays into dirt and grimy green.

This is it. He might never see her again.

He thinks he might have known in the beginning.

It was never him she wanted. It was the place he was taking. He filled in the gaps in her heart.  
She never really needed him.

 

“--talked to everyone she’s ever met on Chandrila, but there’s no sign of him.”

Rey realizes where she is and hastily corrects her facial expression to show she is paying attention. Concern. Not boredom and crippling sadness. She is concerned for the loss of a colleague.

Luke goes on, and Rey throws in a few head-tilts and analytic frowns to make up for all the time she must have spent staring slack-jawed over his shoulder at the gardens. She’d been thinking about the first time she met Ben. They’d been on the veranda. He hadn’t liked her at first.  
Maybe he never liked her at all. He left.

“-- expect her to have some pull, being a Senator,” Luke is still rambling, scratching the back of his head with an almost nonchalant bewilderment, as if Ben is a barn cat with a tendency to wander. “But she hasn’t seen head or tail of him. It looks like he just doesn’t want to be found.”

“Hm.” says Rey.

“Any-anyway.” Luke clears his throat. “Miles says he’s happy to supervise you in the meantime, and he’s there if you ever need to-- if you want to talk that is. And so am I. Talk. I’m happy to talk with you, Rey.” he gestures clumsily. “I know this must be a jarring transition for you.”

“It is.” Tears spring to her eyes again. “I am very sad all the time.”

Gina would be so embarrassed if she were here. She says Rey “dumps out her purse” in people’s laps. Which is silly. Rey doesn’t have a purse. And she would rather make people uncomfortable than go around lying to everyone about how she’s feeling all the time.

“I’m sorry, Rey.” says Luke. He truly looks it. “I don’t want you to hurt.”

Rey thinks if Luke had a purse, he would go around dumping it in people’s laps, just like she would.

She smiles up at him and feels tears prick the corners of her eyes. “I know.” she says. “It’s not your fault.”

 

 

He is a shadow of a shadow. A frail, gaunt, liver-spotted thing strung together out of bones and wilting sinew. His skull is split, his face collapsed.

It steals the wisp of breath still caught in Ben’s lungs.

All this time, he was afraid. He hailed, heeded, nurtured this bit of blood and bone like it was something holy.

Snoke is nothing. Nothing but a loud and carrying voice.

He offers a long, scarred white hand. “Join me.” his voice rasps soundlessly through space.  
In that moment, Ben feels within his heart of hearts the depth of his potential. This shriveled, serpentine fragment of a being in front of him can make him great.

More than any Sith or Jedi. More than stuff of legend.

In that moment, he realizes exactly what the creature called Snoke is offering him.

Power. Unadulterated, undiluted, absolute.

Power beyond his wildest dreams.

Ben sees himself at the helm of a crusade that will make the galaxy fall to its knees. He sees planets cleaving apart at the core and withering into space. He sees Rey with her hands around her throat, looking small and afraid, gaze blurred with tears, soundlessly, desperately, mouthing his name--

This is not who you are, Ben Solo.

This time, the voice in his head sounds like his mother’s.

“Join me.” says Snoke.

No conflict or turmoil this time. No noise.

Ben lifts his hand and squeezes his fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. There’s smut in the next one, promise. ;) Thanks for reading!


	12. Chapter 12

Five months later, Rey wakes from a dream.

She doesn’t open her eyes right away. She can still see a faint imprint of a ship on the backs of her lids.

She dreamed he came back. That he was here on the beach. Here to rescue her.

_You knew I’d come back_. He had told her.

She honestly didn’t. And then she’d imagined. 

Everything of him is still in her head.

“It’s like being in your heart.” Rey had told him once, pressing their foreheads together and wriggling beneath him so they could hold hands.

“What is?” His breathing was already starting to hitch. His long, awkward face was contorted ridiculously. His eyes were scrunched shut.

“Seeing into your head.” Rey nuzzled her nose against his beak and wriggled some more, until their hips slotted against each other and Ben groaned and dropped his head to her shoulder.

“Sometimes all it is are numbers,” she had chattered on, oblivious. “You count in your head lots. Specially when we’re sexing.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yup.” Rey studied the pale, sloping arch of his bare back and the arms caging her into the mattress. He was shaking with the effort of holding himself still. He was letting her finish   
her sentence, and expected her to be appreciative of it. He was such a gentleman. “And sometimes I feel when you’re scared and when you miss me.” She knocked their foreheads together again and kissed him. “I like it when you miss me.”

She couldn’t remember what Ben had said after that. All she remembers is what she felt through him.

Contentment, warm and rich, like gingerbread.

She wonders if he misses that. The way her consciousness would stab into his at random, the way she would strike up a conversation when he was halfway inside her, or flick his ear or tug his hair or boss or sass him. She wonders if he misses the worst of her.

She misses every part of him. Grumpy, rumpled, sleep-starved and mean, cagey, possessive, irritated.

Angry.

She misses how she could bring him back from the brink. She could reach down into the depths of his angst-ridden mania and drag him back by the roots of his hair.

“You aren’t scary.” She would tell him, and it was never a taunt. “I’m not afraid of you.”

And when that didn’t work, she laughed in his face.

While his uncle fretted and cowered and braced himself for the worst, Rey placated and cuddled her way through his every fit, however minor.

“You’re really not scared of me?” He had asked her once, very early on, back when all of their meetings were during the day.

“Course not.” She had told him, shakily tracing his name on notebook paper. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

And she’d felt it again. Gingerbread.

She misses everything, even his rage. It made her feel close to him.

It’s nothing that burning his picture will fix. She’s split to her soul.

“Rey.” his voice rings in her ears like a bell.

She bolts upright and looks out the window.

The beach is empty. The wind rips the water from the sea and throws it against the shore, harsh and haphazard, like a child pulling at wrapping paper. It’s a playful little tempest. 

The sky is a splotch of starlit periwinkle, colors running together like watercolor, with flashes of fuzzy lightning crackling through the darkness as cheerfully as a campfire. There is no thunder.

Rey is glad. It never used to bother her, but she doesn’t like it anymore. There’s no bed but hers to curl up in and hide.

She gets up and puts on her shoes. The wind isn’t cold, so she wraps herself up in one of his old shirts and his belt and leaves her coat on it’s hook. She opens the door and slips   
out into the night.

The air is sharp and clean. It smells like springtime, like buds breaking open, like dew frozen on the orchard saplings and rust from the rain.

She goes down to the beach and stands behind the rickety wooden fence along the shore. The sand, a hard, hewn, rocky span of finely-milled gravel, looks white as snow in the moonlight. It’s always so bright here. On Jakku, it would get black as pitch when the sun went away.

Rey liked it better that way. Darkness made it safe to sleep. She knew no one would ever find her or hurt her in darkness that thick. It was like being swaddled.

She didn’t never to mind the moonlight, the same way she never used to mind the thunder.

One of the stars is brighter than all the rest. It’s moving. Brighter and closer. It has wings.

For a moment, Rey scarcely dares to breathe. She doesn’t wonder. She doesn't hope. She stands shivering in the warm wind as a ship; sleek, black, ominous and unfamiliar, sinks down onto the beach.

Near the coves. Near their special place.

Breath caught in her throat, Rey throws herself forwards into a run.

She tears across plains of beach roses brittle with salt, through the little peninsulas of slate and sandstone where the birds build their nests. She wades through the shallow pools that bracket their cove and scrambles up the rocky slope so fast she skins her knees.

She can feel him. He’s here. He’s home.

The ship has made a landing few pilots could achieve. The lights on the wingtips flicker.

She arrives just in time. There’s the grind of durasteel, a click and a hiss, and the ramp thuds down hard enough to crack the slate.

She knows it’s him in an instant, even though she can’t see his face.

She could always find him in crowds. Even without reaching out with her mind, she could always tell Ben by the sheer breadth of his shoulders and the way he held himself; so casually aggravated, defensive and suspicious.

He sweeps down the ramp and stops at the foot of it.

Rey realizes he’s not simply coming home.

She’s being collected.

“Ben?” she breathes.

He’s always worn black, but there’s something regal and austere about the heavy black clouds of fabric that whip around him in the tempest of engine exhaust and ocean mist. His   
saber looks different. He’s wearing a mask. It’s black and monstrous.

For a moment, they stand there, staring at each other the way they did when they first met. There’s that same electrifying connection; awe, interest, curiosity, pure raw nerves flickering like a live wire that connects them.

“You came back.”

 

 

Guilt stabs through him, sudden and violent.

She looks so forlorn. Slight and shivering in the balmy gusts of rainwater, skinny knees knocking together. So small and so young.

He reaches up and pulls off his mask. It lands in the wet sand with a dull, heavy thud.

It feels like years. He doesn’t know how he ever left her alone for so long.

There was always something tentative about the way he loved her. It was frugal and gentle. Too practical to be passionate. It was the side of him that let her go into town on the weekends and run around the island unchaperoned. It was the side that gave her privacy and space.

And then there was the other side of him, the one he held back the same way he held back his anger. The side that held her hand while she walked fence poles and made her wait months before he let her train with a lightsaber.

He’s has his fill of practicality. He doesn’t intend to love her in moderation.

“You came back.”

“Rey.” He starts to reach out for her, but stops himself. He’s not sure she’ll want to run to him.

She missed him to. She aches with it. He can sense it. But that’s all buried beneath a shroud of anger and confusion. She feels abandoned. She wants to make him work for it. She wants to give him everything. She wants to forgive him and interrogate him and never speak to him again.

“I’m so sorry.” He tells her.

He takes a step closer and she runs to him. Her legs hitch up around his waist and his gloved hand cradles the back of her head. They tumble into the sand.

Later, he’ll have time to explain everything. He’ll hold her in his lap and confide in her his every fledgling dream for their galaxy, for the life they'll have in it together. He will bare his soul and beg for forgiveness with a resolve that will outshine her wildest fantasies.

But for now. Now he’s not sure he can say anything.

It’s frantic and desperate. Just like in the beginning, while they were trying not to get caught. There is a bed on the ship, but they fall to the sand in the throws of a seaside tempest.

He claws at her makeshift tunic and she digs through the layers of armor.

He’s big enough to almost entirely shield her from the rain. Bits of it splash down onto the crown of her head and her knees where her legs are splayed for him. She’s wearing an old shirt he used to sleep in.

Ben reaches down and tears the layers between them aside, pressing in, digging deep, splitting her open. Her back skids against the sand and she wails at the sky.

She feels so good. She always feels so good, he feels like he could stay just like this forever, halfway inside her, dumbstruck and cross-eyed, her ratty, silkspun hair catching on the cracked leather of his gloves.

“You came back.” she says, in a trembling whisper. The pad of her thumb grazes the raised line of half-healed flesh that mars his face.

Their hip bones clack together. She flutters around him, tight and wet.

He clasps her jaw in his gloved hand and turns her head so he can suck on her neck. “I didn’t come back just for you to leave me.” his voice wobbles a little as his bottoms out. He pulls out and presses back in as gently as he can. He bows his head to her shoulder and struggles not to come. “You’re not going to Moraband. You’re going anywhere there’s a fight.”

His cock drags out of her and nudges back in. Her muscles flutter and give. Her flesh yields around him. He drops clumsy kisses on her collarbone, and Rey’s heart flutters like a nervous bird in the cage of her ribs.

“You,” he punctuates every breath with a harsh, deep thrust, “Are not going. To Kyber.”

Rey nods frantically. He pins her and strokes her while she bleats at the sky.

“Five months. Is a record. We’re not. Going to break.”

Rey blinks and shivers as he works her over. Even now-- even after everything-- he feels clumsy and inadequate. But Rey doesn’t care. Rey has never cared. She doesn’t care about his beak nose or big ears or black soul. She loves the person he is.

And he loves her.

Not enough to do the right thing.

He’s never going to set her free.

They rock together. It’s slow and intense. He braces himself on his forearms above her and moves his hips roughly, rhythmically, in a way that grinds her into the sand.

She seizes around him. He pulls out just in time, but barely. He spills across her stomach, cursing, clumsy and fumbling, hunching his back to shield her from the solid sheet of rain that slides off the edge of his ship and on top of them.

Rey cards her fingers through his hair. She doesn’t know where he’s taking her. She doesn’t care enough to search his mind. She doesn’t care to ask questions about his new order, his plan for the galaxy, least of all her place in it. He’s home forever, now. They’re together.

Ben hears the thought inside her head and strokes his lips along her soft, pale neck. His voice splits down the middle. “I’m never letting you go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! <3


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